Abomination Of Desolation (Left Behind Is A Lie II, Twelve.)

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

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The behavior of the Taliban as well as their extremist attitudes do not correspond in any way with a tolerant Islam. We have always been opposed to extremist tendencies of Islam and we still are. We have not stopped insisting on defending an Islam of tolerance which would be profitable to every Muslim, in Afghanistan and in the whole world, and we will always defend it. ~Ahmad Shah Massoud

I saw this earlier.

Missouri Republican lawmakers are trying to force through a strict dress code only for women in the state legislature.

I'm confused. What the fuck do these people think they are? The Islamic Republic Of Iran? The fucking Taliban? How is this horseshit even American?

Also, still not a word from all the fake Republican moralists, about George Santos.

Which is exactly why I'm disinclined to listen to anything these fucking people have to say about morality. 

You are the company you keep, and today I saw Matt Gaetz bro it up with somebody who's, thus far, lied about basically everything. I'm still confused as to how Republicans think George isn't going to fuck them over and lie to them, too.

And these are the same fucking people who can't wait to prostrate themselves before the Hammer And Sickle and Vladimir Putin, because they think Russia is "Christian" or something.

You know, it's funny, all these "Christian" countries the Right glorifies seem to have shockingly low rates of actual religious observance, high rates of abortion and substance abuse, and a tendency to allow men to act like beasts.

Which is, of course, the fucking point.

George Santos isn't being tolerated because they actually need him that bad. Don't tell me they couldn't get another Republican for that district, or somewhere else, to replace his vote. No, all the lying is something they see as a good in and of itself...and the fact that nobody can do anything about it...to Republicans, that means Power.

Until he screws them over, anyway. Then it's bad.

Same with all the bad shit going on in Ukraine. The fact that the criminal mercenary Wagner Group hired some guy to fight, who'd killed his own mother in a "Drunken Frenzy" is, to the Wagnerites, simply about needing another body to throw at the enemy. The Ukrainians obligingly killed the son of a bitch.

For Republicans, it's about casting off the constraints of modernity and morality. They purport to claim Roman and Western values, or at least a sort of fascism that uses such things as an excuse. 

But, when push comes to shove? No, that's not it. Deep down, These people fancy themselves as Odoacer, the Barbarian King, conquering Rome...and it's "their" time and they're going to do what they want to do. 

And you...Can't. 

Which is of course the goddamn point.

They see themselves as the Abomination of Desolation, standing in the Holy Place and declaring themselves gods.

These fucking people, with their bushy beards and creepy obsessions and fascinations with European nobility and Medieval Catholicism all figure they're going to get to tell other people how to be "Christian" or what to believe, or even simple things like what kind of dog you can have or not. 

And somehow, they consistently fail to remember how this shit ended the first time, how it always ends, with the storming of the castles and Jacobin revolutionaries and National Razors. Why? Because people get fucking tired of it. At best you end up with neutered monarchies and socialism, at worst, a bloody history, a tumultuous century of barricades and empires and revolutions and typically several Republics before shit settles down.

You very rarely end up with Pure Unadulterated Male Power, at least in the Western world, anyway. Seems like it only works out that way in the Middle East on any kind of consistent basis, although it's not working out so well for the Iranians lately.

Which is exactly why I figure these fuckers will eventually get around to preaching Radical Islam, not that there's much difference between that and what passes for their idea of "Christianity."

In the end, all the Christian stuff is just a lie, all the eschatology, all the philosophy, all the sophistry these assholes use to try and make their own debased urges sound like anything else.

It's all crap.

But this is America and we don't have to put up with it. That's the whole damn point of this country.

Remember that. There's going to be a test later.

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Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. ~Karl Marx