"Pureblood."

"I didn't want to do it,'' he hears himself saying. "I didn't want to leave them behind.''

The void laughs at him. There are miles of empty air beneath his dangling feet. "You had no choice.''

"Yes I did! I didn't have to come here.'' He pauses. "I didn't have to do anything,'' he says quietly, and inhales another lungful of death. "It was all automatic. Maybe it was inevitable.''

"-- Evitable,'' echoes the distant horizon. Something dark and angular skims across the stars, like an echo of extinct pterosaurs. Turbofans whirring within its belly, the F-117A hunts on: patrolling to keep at bay the ancient evil, unaware that the battle is already lost. "Your family could still be alive, you know.''

He looks up. "They could?'' Andrea? Jason? "Alive?''

The void laughs again, unfriendly: "There is life eternal within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the possible alternative endings to their life. There is a fate worse than death, you know.'' 

~From A Colder War, a novella by Charles Stross.

So, this afternoon I saw that "Pureblood" was trending.

I've always figured this whole "Pureblood" bit was some kind of a racist thing. Turns out it's more Anti-COVID-19-Vax but there's clearly racism going on here as well.

Looking for more writing material I clicked on the trend, then I posted about it, linking to my previous post. 

So then, this jackass decides to "@" me. A "Mr. Kilo 221" with three followers.

Sure, Comrade, seems legit.

Called me a "Mud Blood." Said what were people like me gonna do, fight him with that "Mud" clogging up our veins? Motherfucker, I'm a veteran. I've got a card somewhere around here with a couple dozen shots listed on it. Why is this one any different?

Also, like my Grandpa used to say "Rotsa Ruck." You're going to need it.

I'm going to have to be mocking this shit for awhile now.

Bitch, in classic WASP parameters and terms I'm probably whiter than you...not least because I was basically an adult by the time Slavic and particularly Russian people like you likely are, who hadn't fled Soviet tyranny and become card-carrying fanatical Conservatives with a healthy side of Randian Objectivism were actually accepted as "White."

Entire feed is Antisemitism, Antivax woo, calling people "Groomers," conspiracy theories, January 6th fetishism and this...wanting to "Save" Greta Thunberg from the "Woke Machine?"

Why, oh why, do they always end up having a thing for liberal women in general, and teenage girls in particular??

Like...you would be so cool, if only you would give up every single thing that makes you interesting.

It's funny how these perverts *Always* every single time, end up telling on themselves.

Like, seriously this shit is creepy.

Like, Dr. Strangelove meets HP Lovecraft in a seedy truck stop bathroom creepy.

Like, Lindsey Graham lurking around a gay bathhouse creepy.

This dude sitting there zombie-eyed in the break room watching FOX News like an ADHD kid cranked out on watching cartoons...which is disturbing enough. But the truth is, in his own mind he's looking at Jesse Kelly or Tucker Carlson and he's thinking "Harder, daddy, harder!" kind of creepy.

At this point, I imagine at some time in the near future some unsuspecting MAGA Republican will have a focus group going, say the wrong thing, and set these people off. They'll start chanting "Blood for the Blood God" and end up sacrificing him to...I don't know, whatever the fuck it is.

This shit is a cult of stupidity, and it's the stupidity that makes this shit dangerous.

If these people get their civil war, their "Killing fields with a mall" as I've said before...they are going to die in great numbers, by preventable means, and it will be their own damned fault. These fucking people love them some Vladimir Putin and they want to do what he's trying to do in Ukraine...but I strongly suspect if they get their shot at it, they'll fail just as bloodily, maybe even worse.

Because they'll look at the directions for the goddamn awful-tasting water purification tablets and then throw them out because it's "too complicated" and they'll make up some "alternative" means that they think is somehow "better" and then a whole bunch of them will die from bad water and disease. 

Not least because they don't have the sense the Gods gave Roman legionaries to at least pipe their own shit downriver.

Decency, reality, and not being a fucking creeper are real things, and it used to be easy as hell to be a conservative and stay within those boundaries. I miss those days.

This shit is ridiculous. What the fuck is it going to take before the rest of us say "Enough is enough" and make it stop?

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." ... "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."  ~HP Lovecraft

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For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27

The Believers.

Hess: So what shall we toast to, boys? I can blather on about “To health” or “To success,” but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?

Migs Mayfield: How ’bout a toast to Operation Cinder?

Hess: Now there’s a man who knows his history.

Mayfield: No, I don’t just know it. I lived it. I was in Burnin Konn.

Hess: Burnin Konn?

Mayfield: Mmm.

Hess: That was a hard day. I had to make many unpleasant decisions.

Mayfield: Yes, you did. Entire city gone in moments, along with everybody in it. We lost our whole division that day. Man, that was like 5-10,000 people.

Hess: Yep. All heroes of the Empire.

Mayfield: Yeah. And all dead.

Hess: Well, it’s a small sacrifice for the greater good, son.

Mayfield: Depends on who you ask, don’t you think?

Hess: [irritated] What you gettin’ at, trooper?

Mayfield: All those people, the ones who died, was it good for them? Hmm? Their families? The guys I served with? Civilians, those poor mud scuffers, died defending their homes, fighting for freedom. Was it good for them?

Hess: But we’ve outlasted them, son. They’re eating themselves alive. The New Republic is in complete disarray, and we grow stronger. You see, with the rhydonium you’ve delivered, we can create havoc that’s gonna make Burnin Konn pale by comparison. And then they’re gonna turn to us once again. You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order. And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms. Ah. To the Empire.

[Mayfield chuckles, then fires a blaster at Hess' chest, killing him instantly. He and Mando then shoot their way out of the mess hall] ~From The Mandalorian, Season 2, Ep. 7 "The Believer"

I saw this last night.

Some nut in Arizona went into a PetSmart and started harassing the customers and employees because the store has a pride flag, and because the Cashier was wearing a mask, and talked about [some imagined people] being "Democrats" like it was some kind of derogatory thing. He tried to get the customers in on it but the one dude's response was "Dude, I'm just trying to buy dog food."

And he went at this until the manager showed up and threw him out.

Because nothing, absolutely nothing, is more important to these goons than posing for the goddamn base, and beefing with imagined-liberalism in the imaginary world of the internet basically lets these droolers jack off in public without getting arrested.

I work in a Big Box store, we occasionally get idiots like this...usually older white guys who beef about us having to scan their ID's so they can buy alcohol, or who bristle at basic questions when they're having a problem with whatever card they're using...as if it should be some big secret that they're buying rubbers, or something.

My standard answer is "Company policy" I either can't do anything about X or I have to ask about Y. It's always the same kind of douche-bros who think flashing their pistol permit counts as ID. (Yes, State law says it does, but I can't scan that, sir. Now fork over your ID or the cash register will not allow the transaction to proceed.)

Basically, it boils down to some people dislike any hard and fast rules and think way too highly of themselves.

People want to burn down America because they think corporate policies or state liquor laws or whatever-the-fuck other stuff they imagine to be beneath them equals "Communism" or some stupid shit. Yet the same people, generally speaking, would apparently not object to being ruled over with an Iron Fist by Vladimir Putin...or something.

Because effectively all that's left of "Conservatism" is beefing with liberals and hypocritically thinking that basic rules and reality don't apply to them, while desiring to dictate every single thing that other people do.

As if that kind of bullshit doesn't end the same way, with bloody revolutions and National Razors and the Epuration Sauvage almost every single time you run the fucking experiment.

I think, deep down, a lot of these jackoffs know that as long as there's certain hard lines in the world, certain things that must be done a certain way, and reality is a thing, they'll lose.

Hence the popularity of conspiracy theories and hostility to education. If you don't know anything, you can believe whatever you want. It's the same bullshit that prompts the occasional Prosperity Gospel grifter or religious fanatic to claim they can raise the dead or some bullshit.

These fucking people want some kind of a magical world.

And they've internalized the postmodern idea that belief shapes the Universe. They want a Great Undoing Of Reality...because they think they'll get to be gods or some shit.

But the guy in this video that seems to think he's a frenetic action-movie star? He will have gotten zapped by a designated marksman from 500 meters away and won't live to see any of it. 

And more to the point, said designated marksman will have taken him out because it was that...or give away his position by laughing.

...Which is exactly why these idiots want to tear down the modern world and live like Medieval peasants or something.

This bullshit is ridiculous, and it's been smacking hard into the wall of reality for years now. The limitations of this type of shit should be obvious based on how things in Russia are going. Grifting, scamming, and mass use of postmodern thought processes are exactly what got the Russians into a lot of this mess. 

Trouble is, these morons keep backing the truck up and hitting the wall again because they think they'll bust through and have some kind of a Gnostic revelation or something.

In the end, these motherfuckers think they're going to lie to God. (And get away with it, as if God is dumb or at least in on the scam. I was taught it does not work that way.)

Who Is George Santos?

Thing is, America...and much of the modern world, for that matter, requires an educated populace that functions on the level of reality on some kind of an honest basis.

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

And this? This ain't it.

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I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those...moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. ~Roy Batty, Blade Runner.

...

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27

Slaves Of The Caesars, Again (Tyre Nichols Post II.)

When I am dead, bury me

In my beloved Ukraine,

My tomb upon a grave mound high

Amid the spreading plain,

So that the fields, the boundless steppes,

The Dnieper's plunging shore

My eyes could see, my ears could hear

The mighty river roar.

When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears

Into the deep blue sea

The blood of foes ... then will I leave

These hills and fertile fields --I'll leave them all and fly away

To the abode of God,

And then I'll pray .... 

But until that day I know nothing of God

Oh bury me, then rise ye up

And break your heavy chains

And water with the tyrants' blood

The freedom you have gained.

And in the great new family,

The family of the free,

With softly spoken, kindly word

Remember also me.

~Taras Shevchenko

...

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan

I posted about the Tyre Nichols killing last night and early this morning. 

Well then, I woke up a little bit ago and I saw this:

The Russians are deporting the families of "Luhansk People's Republic" soldiers who are fighting for them, to Russia.

Sure, they're being promised "benefits" but how is that going to work out, when the Russian Army has mobile crematoria to "Disappear" KIA (Killed In Action) soldiers in the field so that the Russian government has no body to provide and can thus skate on having to pay anything to that soldier's family.

What part of "Literally everything is bad faith with these fucking people" (with this applying to the entire global authoritarian modern "Right" as it is) don't you understand?

And my question is, "America First" people, Republicans and Tankies, what makes you think the Russians would do you any different than they're doing the "Luhansk People's Republic" and its soldiers?

There is no such thing as "Conservative" enough, or "White Enough" and the cruelty is, in fact, the damn point. 

And they don't give a fuck about you. All of humanity is nothing more than puppets on a string to these fucking people, play-toys for their debased urges. Remember that when you hear some chucklefuck repeating conspiracy theories.

That's just somebody who sees themselves as being on the other side of that line from you. Nothing is real to them, there's no morality, there is no God. It's all crap, so why not just do what they want??

I can't spell it out any more plainly than that.

And if you protest, plead for your own life, resist, or anything like that...these motherfuckers will do everything they can to make you sound like the bad guy simply because you "Inconvenienced" them.

And for those people...the sum total of existence is that they see everyone as slaves, and wish only for themselves to be a better class of slave than some of the other slaves.

There's no concept, in their minds, of Truth to serve as a floor to stand on to push back against Power.

They literally don't believe in freedom as a concept.

That might be how they do things in Russia, but that's not what I was taught America was, or conservatism or Christianity for that matter.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

You either accept Christ out of your own free will or you might as well not bother. Same goes for any other religion, too. It's funny how all these "Nationalists" and White Supremacists and shit can never think of anything better to do with the Cross of Jesus Christ than turn it into a flaming lawn ornament.

You either accept America, in all its diversity and freedom, with all its flaws and all its strengths...and believe in our expanding traditions of liberty and individual rights and social change...or what you want isn't really America.

You can slap the Hammer and Sickle on a red, white and blue flag all you want, but it's still the goddamn symbol of Communism and Totalitarianism. 

It pisses me the fuck off that the party of Ronald Reagan has now become the party of Neo-Soviet tankies. They've turned the party of Abraham Lincoln into the party of Nathan Bedford Forrest, with malice aforethought.

Reagan Wept.

Yeah, the Gipper could be a racist asshole, but he never went that far. He generally seemed to understand that "Thou Shalt Not Kill" had to be a thing.

I'm goddamned tired of the fact that so many of us look at the slime of humanity and see a thing they want to emulate.

And not just emulate, but sell their country and their souls to, for rather less than thirty pieces of silver.

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27

Part One

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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

Kingdom Of Fear (Tyre Nichols Post I.)

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.

The video of the killing of Tyre Nichols, a Black man, by five Black police officers in Memphis, TN was released today. As I understand it, he was just driving home from the park after taking pictures of the sunset when he was stopped, pulled from his car and beaten to death in what looks to be blind rage by the officers. The fuck if I even know why.

Only when he was already dead, did they even stop to consider what they had done. And then they immediately while still on camera, started making up excuses and rationalizing. 

Think about that for a second. Do something like that in the military, and you will very likely spend the rest of your life in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.

Out of respect for his memory and the wishes of his family, I snipped from a video that he took, not the police video of his death.

This is a guy that was known for a larger-than-life personality, photography and skateboarding, he left a four-year-old kid behind. This dude is not much different than a whole bunch of people I know. He's somebody I could've probably had a hell of a conversation with. Hell, except for his choice of athletic activities (I'm more of a hiking guy, Skateboarding resulted in too many broken bones) he's not that much different from *Me.* 

Yeah, I'm white and he was black, and that doesn't matter to me. Shit, I watched the video his family posted, and  my first thought was I wish I was that damned talented. This guy's death seems like a loss to the world.

Fix the goddamned police, get the fascists and the murderous thugs out, NOW!

<----I've written about this before.

But, of course, there's another issue with all that...

I'm sure Tucker Carlson and all the other rich ass white pants-shitting cowardly fascists who want to jack off to this kind of base cruelty think the Memphis P.D. didn't go far enough.

In point of fact, Tucker, along with MTG and all the other usual suspects, is fear-mongering about "Antifa" and trying to have it designated as a terrorist group. Antifa literally isn't even an organization, it meets none of the legal, operational or organizational definitions of a terrorist group.

It's just...people...who are against fascism. 

And Tucker is either too stupid or too much of a fascist, Orbanite, Putinist bootlicker to see that he's telling on himself.

Motherfucker wants you to have to ask some body-armored Roid-Rage-Machine Incredible Hulk-looking motherfucker who's trained to kill anybody what looks at them sideways for permission to go to the bathroom or walk down the street...and to have to live in basically White-Bread North Korea where spicy food is illegal...just so he can feel secure in his power and wealth.

Dude could be doing whatever the fuck he wanted. He could spend his life laying on the beach in Bali getting oiled up by a harem of hot local women and STILL be getting paid for it...and he does...this.

Tucker Carlson could still have fame, power, and wealth, even if he did nothing but spend his days sitting on the couch eating Cheetos, masturbating and smoking weed.

But he'd rather rail against things that...literally don't exist in any kind of organizational terms...so much so that if he got what he wanted, somebody would have to lock up 3/4 of the country including most of the government and the military.

Because nothing will ever fucking be good enough for fascist fanatics like Tucker Carlson.

Because the world doesn't just bow down and say "Thank you, Sir, may I have another?"

Whether it's hate and fear of Black people in particular...or the idea that literally somebody, anybody, has to be there just to be discriminated against and murdered and be the N-Words of Fucker's moral and political universe, I don't know. It doesn't matter who, there's literally no such thing as "Conservative" or "White" enough. 

For example, Ukraine is a pretty traditional-conservative, mostly-Christian country, and none of that mattered worth a damn when somebody the Right equates with Power said it didn't.

I don't even know how these fucking people people determine who or what is "In the club" anymore.

Certainly, if you believe in democracy or self-determination or that you have the right to exist without getting beaten to death or shot if that's what Power wants to do that day...you're out.

I don't know how people can live like this.

But I do know that for people like Tucker Carlson and a lot of what passes for "Conservatives" and "Republicans" these days, that goalpost is infinitely moveable. More to the point, and I'm not kidding on this...they long for it to be them and the security forces that protect them on one side and all of the rest of humanity on the other side.

Because America isn't America to them if anybody else gets any. Heaven isn't Heaven if everybody gets to go.

And there's a lot of fucking people out there who are just like Tucker, most of them don't have anywhere near the fame or money that he does, though. They'd rather bow before the Hammer and Sickle with the muzzle of an AK-74M rifle (carried by some Wagner murderer or Tankie collaborator) pressed against the back of their heads than see people they don't like be free.

But this is America, and you ain't got to put up with that bullshit.

And, fundamentally, that is what these fucking people are afraid of. And that's exactly why they're Anti-American.

The fear and hate of everything is willful, with malice aforethought, because it's the only kind of ethical or moral structure that's self-serving enough for these assholes.

And we're going to have to be the ones who put a stop to that shit, before it consumes all of us.

Black Lives Matter.

Or nobody else's matter either.

Together we rise, or none of us do.

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Ka mate, ka mate! ka ora! ka ora! Ka mate! ka mate! ka ora! ka ora! Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru Nāna nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā Ā, upane! ka upane! Ā, upane, ka upane, whiti te ra! ~Ka Mate, Maori Haka (main body)

...
'Tis Death, 'Tis Death, 'Tis Life, 'Tis Life
'Tis Death, 'Tis Death, 'Tis Life, 'Tis Life
This is the hairy man
Who caused the sun to shine again for me
Up the ladder, up the ladder!
Rise! The Sun shines.
~Ka Mate, English translation.

Useful Idiots

There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die. Who knows? If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix — a clean well lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except those who know in their hearts what is missing... And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Generation Of Swine.

Maybe it's just me?

I started out as a Christian and a conservative and I don't remember the sexual ethics of either group being like this.

There was a bit of a dustup last week when it came out that Tim Allen flashed Pamela Anderson Lee during filming for Home Improvement back in the 1990's and some idiot's response was "Imagine being married to Tommy Lee and being offended when Tim Allen flashes you."

Like, I don't give a damn, she obviously didn't want to see that. Again, apparently these fucking people literally don't believe in consent.

And then I saw this crap. The "Proud Boys manual" apparently has more in common with Hindu and Tantric beliefs about the magical power of semen than it does with the Bible or any other "Western" text.

And there's a crap-ton of rumors and shit going around that Matt Gaetz, you know, the Evangelical Christian MAGA self-named "Firebrand" has been caught having an affair with another dude...apparently again.

(And his office staff expects a visit from the FBI?)

Christian-Right Republicanism is absolutely not what I remember it being.

I'm not going to lie, I'm confused.

Is all this shit a new thing, from the last eight years or so, or were these fucking people always like this?

Sad to say, I strongly suspect the answer is that at least some of them were.

And all the other Republicans tolerated those Republicans.

Go ahead, think about this for a second, I insist.

I was raised Christian and conservative, fanatically-pro-American, moderately Republican and with at least somewhat-socially conservative views. Conspiracy theories, Racism and the Soviet Union were all bad things, and frankly any more drug use than smoking weed on occasion-and/or knowing people who did was completely beyond my comprehension. I'm a veteran, I was in various positions of responsibility in a few different churches. Shit, I volunteered for my local Republican Party in the 2000 election! 

The fact that I've been a gamer most of my life, I like spicy food, and I currently vote Democratic, are basically my only dissensions from being one of those old WASP-y shits down at the Elk's Club at this point.

For fuck's sake I'm so "Basic Old White Guy" that I'm not cool in today's world. 

And I'm positively disgusted that the prime candidate for RNC chair at this point is...Crackhead Mike Lindell. You know, the "My Pillow" Guy and fanatical Trump Stan.

For no better reason than he's...a fanatical Trump Stan. If that dude gets in, he's going to destroy what's left of the Republican Party and I'm not sorry. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Oh, and by the way, a major FBI Special Agent In Charge who had responsibility for several of the Trump-era Russia-related investigations was just arrested for being a goddamned Russian spy and apparently various efforts to investigate the investigations turned up only...more crimes by Trump.

It ain't Ronald Reagan's Republican Party no more.

And why do all these goddamned "America First" motherfuckers see Russia and their goddamn White Knight anyway??

I'll never get it, and maybe I just don't want to. The "Christianity" and "Conservatism" displayed by the Russians is so obviously fake and made for "Western" audiences that it's laughable.

Global nexus of oligarchic criminality and O.G. genocidal Mafia State from way back, with its KGB-agent-Czar and persistent lingering Communist undertones does not give a shit about you, period. Russia, as a nation doesn't give a shit about their own people...so what the fuck do you think they're going to give you for helping them, Republicans?

If you're thinking "9mm Bullet In The Head After They Take Over" that's the correct answer.

Of course current Republicans are so determined to sacrifice somebody to their ideal of the Cruelty Being The Point that they don't even care if it's them what gets sacrificed.

In fact, if anything, they want it. They think if they make things bad enough, Jesus will come and save them while zapping everybody else on the Earth into charcoal briquettes or something something Gazpacho.

No, it doesn't make any sense.

And you know what?

The worst part is, that if America gets broken up into two nations by the goddamned Russians and their espionage and influence games, Republicans would be just fine with being some kind of a neo-Soviet satellite-state collaborationist government...even fully well knowing that most of America's population, military power and standing in the world would end up on the other side of whatever line there is...that's Okay, they're fine with that. So long as the Blacks and the liberals and the Mexicans and all the Queer people and "uppity" women and shit end up on the other side of that line, they'd be happy with it. 

As long as as they get to keep doing cocaine, making money and playing their silly fuck around ratfuck games with each other while they take turns sodomizing the pool boy...and chaining the ladies, you know, Blowbert, Marsha Blackburn, and MTG among others to the pedestal on which sits the bloated, Jabba The Hutt-esque caricature that Newt Gingrich has turned into...they're good with it.

They don't give a good goddamn whether they're New Confederate States Armed Forces is composed of Wagner sodomites fresh out of Russian gulags, Radical Islamists from Syria or thugs from the jungles of the Central African Republic so long as somebody protects them from modernity and social change and lets them pretend to have the kind of power they want while they experiment with putting computer chips in people's heads and otherwise cutting people up while singing "Jesus Loves Me."

And they sure as hell don't give a damn if the average person living in whatever lands they end up controlling has any kind of a life. In point of fact they don't believe that anybody who isn't one of the elites or their hangers-on should have much of anything at all.

The sad part is, as long as they get to "Own The Libs" sufficiently, I'm genuinely afraid the average MAGA would be just fine with being a subsistence farmer or goat-herder and living at that $2-per-person-per-day United Nations poverty line, with their only outlet being whatever weekly religious fuckery they're allowed.

This is America, we're a nation of citizens, citizen-legislators, citizen-soldiers, diverse groups of people, immigrants, we don't have a common culture, a common ideal, or language, or anything of the sort. We don't have a thousand years of history. All we have is what we want to be.

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

And some of us just don't want to.

They'd rather chase after debased desires instead...and for whatever reason, they see Russia as a better bet for that sort of thing.

They simply don't want to be Americans if they have to share America with anybody else, much less "better citizens."

And therein lies the fucking problem. They'd rather be Useful Idiots than citizens.

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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

In The House Of Cocaine Jesus.

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

I've got something to say here, that should not be the least bit off-the-wall of an opinion in a constitutionally-secular country like the United States Of America; If "God Told Me..." is your rationale for anything, you don't belong in government...or working with the public in any capacity outside of Ministry in a specific theological strain of Pentecostal church.

Why? Because seriously, I was a Christian for most of my life. We didn't talk like that. I'm not kidding, even most other Christians don't talk that way.

Perhaps more to the point, I've yet to see Blowbert act in any way that meets any definition of Christian behavior as I was given to understand what those words meant. For people like her, it's almost always all about them. It's all for money, for show, for the gratification of various carnal lists and the greater glory of The Self. And it's the same way, every damned time you run the experiment.

And then people wonder why I say that people like this have thrown Jesus Christ out of his own religion?

And, these fucking people? They never want to do jack shit for anybody else...every single goddamned time.

The Word says different:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. ~Galatians 5:22-23

And I daresay I was (literally) schooled at length as to such things, between churches, plenty of para-church activities, and Christian schools when I was a kid, and greater involvement in churches as an adult...including more positions of authority or responsibility than I ever asked for...not many, but enough...and some of this stuff required me to take actual course work in ethics, ministry and psychology and to prove myself to the satisfaction of the governing body of the Baptist association I was part of...a group of independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches in Northern Michigan that operated under the name of "Victory Baptist." (Also mentioned here) 

A couple of these, I was able to simply work into my then-ongoing community college education, and ask my instructor to write a letter or something on my behalf. For the ministry courses...well, considering where I live that was mostly done by correspondence courses at the time. I also had to do all this on my own dime (except for the college courses, thanks to the GI Bill.)

A hell of a lot of it, though, was that aside from being required to show faith in Christ, not only in words but by actions and personal conduct...I was basically required to give a shit about people. And mind you, this wasn't anything major. I ran a church Men's Group for awhile after the old guy who I'd been helping to do it actually died. 

And I did it, because my friend wanted me to do it, because I was the person he trusted to carry things forward, that's all. 

Can't help but feel that I was held to a much higher standard 25 years ago than a lot of people are today.

And of course now, you can get all the Conspiracy-theory, End Times Narrative bullshit without even having to believe in Jesus Christ at all. In fact, it's probably better and easier if you don't. Cocaine Jesus here, will show you The Way.

You'll just have to, ya know, support his drug habit, or something. 

Seriously, Trump Jr. has a problem, and he constantly films himself talking when he's all coked up. It's sad that nobody gives enough of a shit to tell this guy he needs to get help and get off the drugs.

Remember, Republicans could have been anything, could have stuck with the model of conservatism put forth by Reagan and the Bushes, they chose to be this. Elon Musk could've done anything, he's probably done more than anyone else in recent history to reach for the stars...but fuck all that, he'd rather be a reply-guy to Cat-Turd2 and Scott Adams on Twitter.

Maybe it's just me, but the combination of this small, mean, deliberately conspiratorial, priggish and stupid vision of things and how hard these fuckers are leaning into it...is starting to make me wonder if there ever really was anything else?

Like, seriously at this point I don't think Reagan or either Bush was ever really in the club. I know these fucking people have been a large part of the Republican base since at least the 1960's and the Southern Strategy...but speaking as a former Republican myself I'm starting to wonder how long these sons of bitches have been eating the Party from the inside-out since basically nobody with an (R) next to their name who's currently in office will stand up to this shit.

And if you think the Republican Party is bad about this shit, you haven't seen anything until you get a good look at how the Christian Church as a whole treats legit bad actors.

It's almost like it's all a lie...

Of course, I know from personal experience with this crap myself, you have to quit and/or be cast into the Outer Darkness yourself to really be able to see just how bad it is.

Finding God, or any form of spirituality, is a personal thing. It's a thing you have to want to do. Other people, organizations, whatever...no matter how passionate or well intentioned...they can't do it for you.

And it worries me, that so many people seem to have precisely zero interest in any of that. They'd rather just do what somebody else tells them to.

I hate to sound that way, but I'm going to sound that way: A lot of those people are going to hell.

Organized religion helps for some people, for others it doesn't...and far too many of those claiming to be religious or spiritual leaders are false prophets, exactly the kind of people that Jesus likened to whitewashed tombs. They have, in fact, turned Christianity into little more than a cheap front for the cult of Dis Pater, chthonic Roman deity of mineral wealth and the Underworld.

And if you follow after people like Lauren Boebert, or would deny SNAP benefits and thus food to poor people, I'm going to say it's a safe bet that you're not kneeling at the foot of the cross so much as you're bowing before idols of Dis Pater and Orcus while making offerings to the Emperor.

You have turned the Church of Christ into a House Of Devils, a worship space for a materialistic Cocaine Jesus like Donald Trump Jr.

When somebody says "God Told Me..." we need to start asking "Which God?"

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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

Left Behind Is, And Always Was A Lie (Part II, Eighteen.)

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teacher, leave them kids alone

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone
All in all, it's just another brick in the wall
All in all, you're just another brick in the wall

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers, leave them kids alone

Hey, teacher, leave us kids alone
All in all, you're just another brick in the wall
All in all, you're just another brick in the wall.

~Pink Floyd, Another Brick In The Wall

When I got up this morning (Late because I've been sick and I think I hit the worst of it last night) and logged on, this was the first thing I saw.

Bunch of fuckheads flipping out because Pink Floyd had "Gone Woke" with their new av commemorating 50 years since the Dark Side Of The Moon album dropped.

(Once upon a time, I owned this CD.)

<---Original Album cover (From 1973) for your consideration.

Goddamn, but I'm really getting tired of performative extremism and stupid people.

It just goes on and on, none of these motherfuckers will ever be happy with anything. Why? Because that's what being a goddamn reactionary fanatic for its own sake even is. Without something to be mad about, what the hell purpose do these fools even have in life?

Confront their issues? Find ways to be happy? Get real jobs? How the fuck are rich "Conservative" elites supposed to be grifting off of that? 

Where the fuck you been, Foley?

'Cause if you think somebody like Lauren Witzke having to get a real job is what's going on here, you have another thing coming.

As somebody pointed out to me on Twitter earlier, prosperity (or presumably a stable society) isn't these people's goal, lying and stealing is and they think they're being pretty clever about it. Ultimately, it's kind of problematic for them that this stuff only seems to work on a certain kind of person, even though there's a lot of those people.

They've been clever enough so, that if they ever get what they think they want the law of unintended consequences is going to eat these fucking people's ass for lunch. 

Thing what gets me is...especially since I live in Northern Michigan and see it every day...it's the common working-poor Republicans who pay for a big percentage of their groceries with a Bridge Card who just might be the ones what end up paying the price for American "Conservatism" having blown out its own brains and fallen back on mythology that anybody who lives here could have told you was utter horseshit 40 years ago.

(Likewise, in my experience this generalizes to many, if not most other places at least at the major urban metro or state levels. Yeah, there's places where there's lots of poor POC but there's more white people, period, so there's absolutely going to be more poor white folks. If you can look at population figures and do honest math, you already know this.)

Funny enough, the only conservative that I've ever seen call this out was JD Vance, in his book Hillbilly Elegy. All the "Welfare Queens" are White.

A massive majority of the assorted liberals around here and certainly most of the LGBT folk or People of Color (and there's a lot more than you might think) guess what? For the most part, they either got enough education, enough hustle or enough social networking for the most part that...unless they have a bunch of kids...they have good jobs and generally don't need (or qualify for) any form of public assistance.

(I don't know how the hell people don't see this, except that they do not want to.)

But modern "Conservatives" be they atheistic Randian Libertarians or various forms of Christian Dominionist rage monkeys literally don't believe government has any responsibility towards its citizens, rather they believe that government exists to promote their Ideology and shitty social beliefs.

So, honestly, they don't really give a shit if they end up starving out their own damned people to prove some kind of bullshit "point."

And the fact that one hell of a lot of the "Conservative" voters would gladly starve to death to "Own The Libs" is what makes this shit potentially really fucking tragic.

Burning heretics, shouting "Unga Bunga" while dancing around the fire, and assorted witch hunts are literally the only things that matter to them. I mean, fuck, medieval peasantry is probably a step up from where these people would have us go in their zeal for "Purity."

Trouble with blasting ourselves all the way back to the Caveman days is, how the fuck does that work when so many people have absolutely zero survival instincts?

And don't tell me you have any survival instincts if you're a conservative and you seriously think anybody named Bin Laden is authoritative for any reason whatever. One of these things is simply not like the other one, period. These fucking people were funding radical Islam before a majority of Americans were even aware of that shit. Osama was far from the only one mixed up in all that. 

His father, for example, figured out he could do way more 'for Allah' with a business suit and a pen than with a Kalashnikov and scruffy BDU's. Osama was never going to inherit anything, anyway...which was exactly why he pretty much became an adventurer for "the cause" in Afghanistan. And then they kicked him out for saying the quiet parts from the loudspeaker on the minaret.

And, as with so much else, it's funny how the root of that problem, too, ends up being rich and powerful people, isn't it?

And when the forces of civilization and our global small-L, small-D liberal democratic order punch back...as they surely must simply to preserve themselves and prevent things from getting too out of hand (See Also, Ukraine, Invasion Of) well then all these goddamned nuts are going to be very likely to whip themselves up into some kind of genocidal fervor because they think Jesus is coming.

I did peacekeeping duty in the military, it sucks. Were these people to get their way, that's how the rest of us would have to live...just to live.

Imagine having to spend all day, every day, forever...trying to keep genocidal religious fanatics from killing you and everyone else. And they figure they can outlast the rest of us. For what? I don't know, at this point. There's no endgame here, the cruelty really is the point.

Never fucking mind that they booted Jesus Christ out of His own religion like, four or five years ago and started replacing Him with conspiracy theories.

Because guess what? As shitty as it has often historically been, there's absolutely no way that Christianity (or, for that matter, any mainstream form of Islam or Judaism) would enable these fucking people to be the monsters they wanna be.

If they really, really believe that the End Times are near, that Jesus is coming, they're picking the wrong side and they're doing it with malice aforethought.

I used to be a member of the End Times Prophecy Movement. I've read Revelation many times.

These Fucking People would rather make common cause with Falun Gong and Radical Islam than believe in their own supposed Savior and the black-and-white, chapter-and-verse text of Revelation they've spent decades quoting at the rest of us.

And I guarantee you, when M1A1 Abrams vs. Russian Orc, with or without the AK-47, and/or American Wannabe-Barbarian with an AR-15 reaches its natural conclusion is not when things will start to improve...but exactly when these fucking fanatics who performatively can't or won't read a fucking calendar or their own holy books are going to go all out trying to blow the guts out of civilization and society.

'Cause if you actually read between the lines on all their bullshit, these people literally believe the "End Times" is "When the world, as a whole, adopts liberal values."

So, when they get slapped down, that's how they'll interpret things and that's when they'll really become the suicide bombers shouting Ayn Rand Akbar.

(Never mind that Ayn Rand was on Medicare and Social Security when she died.)

Why? Because they think if things get bad enough...they'll all get whisked off to some gold-plated right-wing Heaven or some kind of space station or some shit...from where they can watch the rest of us suffer and die.

No, it doesn't make any sense. There's no internal logic. Trust me, it just gets worse.

And, were we to pull together and manage not to die, that's when they find some way to destroy the world, and then call themselves blessed for being the "Survivors." 

Which will, I suppose, work great until some nut that worships scarcity destroys most of their goddamn food supply, because reasons.

When there is no Conquering Christ to Shish-Kabob the rest of us for their enjoyment, these fucking nuts will try and make their own End Times, because the truth is it's cruelty and entropy that they worship. 

Left Behind is, and always was, a lie.

But it's the idea of other people being left behind that they actually worship.

Heaven isn't Heaven if everybody gets to go there.

The carpenter and itinerant Rabbi from Nazareth could not be reached for comment.

Don't be one of these fucking people, it's not actually that hard.

Seventeen

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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

...

There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die. Who knows? If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix — a clean well lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except those who know in their hearts what is missing... And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Generation Of Swine.