Saving The Village (American Revelation XI, Eight.)

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

...

It became necessary to destroy the town to save it', a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong. ~Peter Arnett, Associated Press war correspondent.

I saw this last night.

Evidently, over 64,000 people have been arrested in a national gang crackdown in El Salvador. Many of them were arrested without warrants, have no right to legal representation, and no confidential communications...and these are mostly suspects, not convicted criminals. They have for the most part not had proper trials. A giant prison, called the "Terrorism Confinement Center" with a capacity of 40,000 has been built to house them.

Does any of this seem Orwellian and wrong to you, or is it just me? Mind you, El Salvador is a country that doesn't even have its own currency (They use the US Dollar) anymore...but the government can afford to build a giant prison?? 

And mind you, while I'm at it I'll just point out that at least one Cold War-era right-wing death squad has already been active killing alleged gang members. I say "alleged" because you can't really prove anything if they're dead.

If I had to put money on it, I'd say that it'll eventually come out in the wash that a majority of those incarcerated or killed were not actual hard-core criminals, but drug mules, people who were forced to join on pain of death, hangers-on and wannabes, and one hell of a lot of innocent goddamn bystanders.

This is basically the house that Populism built, though, so too goddamned many people won't give a shit. If the US military was doing this type of shit, We The People would be demanding blood, people would go to prison, shit would have to change despite the fact that a third of us would be demanding that it not.

Some places in the world actually don't have that level of civil society, though.

 El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele, a former FMLN Leftist who switched to the conservative ARENA party after being shitcanned by FMLN for bad behavior, but then left ARENA and founded his own once he got elected, has done stuff like legalize Bitcoin as the country's second currency and send soldiers to threaten the legislative assembly (until the Supreme Court ordered them to desist and they stood down.)

His own party, Nuevas Ideas, appears to be neither Left nor Right, but straight-up populist. 

I used to be a conservative. That ain't a good sign.

 More to the point all this crazy shit has a 90% or so approval rating in the country. Populism is the politics of the mob. The thought that "There but for the grace of God go we" has very much occurred to me this morning.

This is exactly the kind of situation Trump wanted for himself, but didn't get despite every effort by too many of those lazy assholes charged with making the system work to just let it happen.

And goddamn, are some people still mad about all that, mad enough to deny obvious reality.

But the darker truth is that if they can't get the State to do their killing and repression for them, sooner or later they're just going to take it upon themselves to try exactly that their own selves. What do you think all this crazy talk about "National Divorce" and secession even is?

It seems very, very likely to me that if these idiots got their own shitty little banana republic, it would end up a Cold War style Russian satellite state, and a lot of the people who think they'd be in charge of it would end up dead or shipped off to Siberian gulags. But sure, those people think Putin is "Based" and the West is "Sick" right now.

Sure enough, something's sick, alright.

Sick enough to try and bring back child labor, especially using all those unaccompanied minors from places like El Salvador who are fleeing crime, repression, and cycles of violence that...believe it or not...mainly started with us. We're the ones who supported the right-wing Junta that spent a decade wrecking the country and perpetrating violence against their own civilian population. The two main gangs in El Salvador both got their start here, specifically in Los Angeles.

Shit, American "Chicago Boys" style economics created a lot of the goddamn mess in Russia that enabled the rise of people like Putin in the first place!

And a hell of a lot of Americans don't notice, much less care.

And people don't seem to get that the Chicago Boys mentality that created that whole situation, using "fear" of "Communism" to gain government and military support and political justifications for rich corporations and the wealthy to rape whole damn countries is swinging back around to target us, and these motherfuckers are hoping to use Putin as a hammer to break America into a bunch of little countries to make it easier.

And they'll do this flagged under the very Hammer and Sickle that they preached rabid pants-shitting fear of 40 years ago to justify mass murder in Central America.

Well, they don't get it...right up until the new CEO with all the social consciousness of an Apartheid-era South African emerald mine lays them off, despite their having literally preached the value of sleeping on the floor at work.

And make no mistake about it, there is no such thing as "Conservative enough" for these fucking people. Ukraine is a majority-Christian, majority-conservative country. The Ukrainians decided they believed in Democracy, freedom, and individual rights, though. 

That was enough to make a lot of right-wing global elites (Like Elon Musk) perfectly fine with Putin's decision to attempt to put an entire nation to the sword. If you think it'll stop with the attempted genocide of Ukrainians, you're wrong.

The Ukrainians said no, and fought back, and we're going to have to do the same damned thing.

Bet on it.

Seven

Слава Україна!

[A group of new prisoners is being processed into Shawshank State Prison.]

Norton: This is Mr. Hadley, he's captain of the guards. I'm Mr. Norton, the Warden. You are convicted felons. That's why they've sent you to me. Rule Number One: no blasphemy. I'll not have the Lord's name taken in vain in my prison. The other rules, you'll figure as you go along. Any questions?

Inmate: When do we eat? [Norton nods to Captain Hadley, who gets right in the new inmate's face]

Byron Hadley: You eat when we say you eat! You shit when we say you shit, and you piss when we say you piss! You got that, you maggot-dick motherfucker?! [slams his baton into the new inmate's stomach, causing the man to fall to his knees, gasping for breath] On your feet!

Norton: I believe in two things: Discipline and the Bible. Here, you'll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord. Your ass belongs to me. [smiles] Welcome to Shawshank.

~From the film The Shawshank Redemption.

Domino Theory (American Revelation XI, Seven.)

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

...

Smoking marijuana, eating Cheetos, and masturbating do not constitute plans in my book. ~Walter White, Breaking Bad.

I saw this stupid bullshit yesterday.

Twitter idiot "Catturd2" trying to claim that the war in Ukraine is "fake."

I mean, what the fuck? I don't know about you, but I see coverage of it on a daily...if not hourly basis via...guess what? My Twitter feed. I follow at least a dozen journalists on Twitter alone who've been over there...plus another on Facebook who's actually somebody I used to work with and know in real life. Plus, other people that I know are in the same boat, with people they know being over there. Plus I've met a couple of displaced Ukrainians even in my small corner of the world.

And...oh hey, look, coverage.

Plus, another dude whose boxing career I used to follow rather closely.

Look, this shit is all verifiable one way or another. I mean, if all else fails you fuckers could go to Ukraine and see it for yourselves.

But of course, people like Cat Turd won't do that. They're not even going to make the slightest effort to assert anything in good faith, either.

I mean, aside from the MAGA Right's generalized desire for Putin to win, and for the Ukrainians to be subjected to genocide (Because this, in their view, will upset the "liberal democratic global order" that they don't think favors them enough. (Fun fact, who started that liberal democratic world order, when, and why? People like Churchill and Truman after WWII because they saw it as the best chance to avoid another war.) More specifically, there's a great desire on the part of These Fucking People to keep their followers from believing, or believing in, in anything at all, I think. Least of all in anything factual or verifiable. Now, Why is that??

It's a hell of a lot easier for the pig-fucker capitalist types to pick these people's pockets, to employ migrant child labor instead of grown-ass American adults, if American "Conservatives" are sitting on the couch smoking weed, eating Cheetos and masturbating rather than paying attention to what's really going on. 

I mean, what else are conspiracy theories, really, but some newfangled Opiate of the Masses??

It's a centralized part of Putin's SOP in Russia and thus of the re-Sovietization of Russian society that it's a lot easier to dominate, to steal, to take shit over...if no one believes in anything. If there's no concept of Truth, that deprives the average person of any kind of floor to stand on to push back against Power. 

The best liars, the biggest guns, the more endless distractions, the most open wallets for the most corrupt officials...wins.

I mean, what the fuck do you think the proliferation of Racism these days is really for, anyway??

What did you think it was ever there for in the first damn place??

Without unity, it's harder for people to push back against moneyed interests.

Without Truth, there is no freedom.

Scott Adams didn't just go performative hard-right because his wife left his arrogant ass. He saw that there was money, power, who knows, even another 15 minutes of fame in it for his dumb ass or he wouldn't have done it.

And the reason people...least of all the "elites" Adams loudly claims to be one of...let this pass is because especially on the "Conservative" side of the fence, it makes stealing...not just money, but political power and rights...that much easier.

When all your base cares about is a performative middle-finger aimed skyward in the face of the whole rest of the world...it's not hard to draw some conclusions about how little they're thinking about their futures, their retirement money, the world they live in, etc.

Don't get me wrong, the Left isn't quite blameless here, either. We have our share of morons, too.

But the difference is, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis and a whole bunch of the rest of these goddamned nutjobs command millions of fanatical followers, some of whom are willing to be quite violent.

Marianne Williamson, on the other hand, is mostly known for sappy self-help BS (And yes, I have a fair amount of familiarity with it, my Mom was a fan) and has about as much of a chance of getting elected President as I do, or as one of my ferrets does.

And Marianne may, apparently, be an egotistical twit. But she's an order of magnitude less malicious than the neo-Commie Putinist GOP. Williamson wants to distract people from various goings-on with dopey New Age talk.

The Republicans, led by DeSantis and Trump, want to distract people from the slavery of their children, the destruction of their standard of living, and the subversion of their nation by Putinist neo-Commies by allowing them to murder their neighbors in some vaguely Culture-War-themed Jihad while they rob everybody else blind.

Because LGBT people or something something Gazpacho.

And, for whatever reason, the people who were dead-ass scared of the Domino Theory in the 1960's are betting on it now. That is, they hope Ukraine Falls ---> Europe Falls ---> The West collectively collapses ---> They somehow get to be a quisling East German style regime in a neo-Soviet satellite state.

It's literally the reverse of the rationale that the Johnson administration used to get us into Vietnam. They don't want to stop the fall, they want to accelerate it.

Now you see why that whole "Build The Wall" thing got rolling? There was a specific precedent I saw that these fuckers had in mind right from the jump; The Berlin Wall.

And they said so themselves.

But this time, they don't want anybody to tear it down, certainly not ordinary people.

These people know that's going to be a lot harder if people don't know...or don't "believe" in...any of the things that are really happening.

More to the point, they themselves don't want to know, because ideology is a hell of a power trip and these people have literally bet on this godless ideology of self and selfishness, where Man's self-satisfaction is the moral purpose of life...over and above their alleged previous belief in Christian Salvation and all that.

So, for them more so than the rest of us, if one even one domino falls their whole way of thinking is at risk and they'd rather sacrifice LGBT or Transgender people or Ukrainians up to and including any or all of the rest of us than be forced to question the ideological corners they've painted themselves into.

The Right-Wing blood god demands not one or two sacrifices for these fucking people to keep their imagined place in the world, but an endless orgy of blood sacrifices.

And, deep down, every last one of these damn people is afraid it might be their turn next, but they're too hooked on the petty cruelty to realize they don't have to be that way.

This shit is an addiction. They don't want the dominos, i.e. all the little hits of petty cruelty that go straight to stroking the frills of their lizard-brains, to stop falling.

And while these people are all afraid of dying, they're even more afraid they might have to stop, or be stopped by others. Power and fear as a combination are a hell of a drug. That's why these fuckers grabbed onto Trump, and why he's fading now (because he lost) and they've latched onto Putin since then.

And they hate America and Ukraine because together, we just might stop Putin. We might just deny these people their dream of some global authoritarian Daddy figure...basically the Antichrist...that they want.

Oh, you didn't think about that did you? How far are these sons of bitches from trying to microchip everybody and claim "It's not the Mark Of The Beast when they do it?!?!"

And that's exactly what unfettered power and these people's false world-system is, and what it leads to. They don't care if it's under some gilded crucifix or the Hammer And Sickle.

They just want the Power.

More to the point, they thought they were almost there, perhaps on a bit of a delay after the debacle of 2020...and then somebody fought back and the world rallied against this shit.

So now they gotta try and deny that, too.

Don't let them. 

If they deceive themselves by their own sorceries, there's no scarlet woman riding a weird monster...they just look like idiots. If the dominos stop falling, sooner or later they'll be seen for being the craven cowards and dirty commies that they are.

And if there's one thing these fucking people are more dead set on than a monomaniacal quest for power it's the upkeep of their own self-images.

Stop the clickety-clickety-click of the dominos falling...and they end up destroying themselves in an orgy of blame and recriminations and fading away in a puff of cocaine. None of these people are actually for the group, it's a mob of selfish narcissists. They're all me, me, me.

And somehow they forgot the rest of us can say "No" and refuse to tolerate their shitty games.

So do it.

Six

Слава Україна!

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. ~Ronald Reagan

Taking Peace From The Earth (American Revelation XI, Six.)

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

It's been a year now, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine started.

I wrote about it then, too.

I remember being as surprised as anyone at the effectiveness and tenacity of the Ukrainian defense. 

Knowing something of the character of these people, I'd always expected them to hold out. 

Honestly, though, I thought, especially since aside from lots of outdated Soviet weapons the main things they had going for them were Bayraktar TB2 UAV's, Javelin missiles and civilians doing drive-by hits with Molotov Cocktails...that they'd be fighting from a rump-state in the western part of the country within a couple months, just hanging on while Russian tanks paraded in Kyiv.

I have to admit I was even more disgusted and shocked when, with the war as an excuse, Russia began a rapid regression to effectively being the Soviet Union 2.0 and literally not caring what anybody thought about it.

I wasn't surprised when hundreds of thousands of Russians left the country almost immediately. I get why a lot of people wouldn't want to live under that shit. I was a Christian and a conservative for most of my life, we got the Communism horror stories in Sunday School.

What did surprise me was the American Right's craven and almost immediate embrace of the Hammer and Sickle...as if they themselves had decided over time that they were on the wrong side in our last Cold War. It's as if they decided, retroactively, that the Iron Curtain...and three generations of oppression...itself was some kind of a good thing.

No, wait, it is exactly that. Somehow, Soviet totalitarian Communism went from being the Enemy, the Devil Himself in the form of nations...to being aspirational. I'll never understand it. Hell, I don't want to.

As I said a year ago, Reagan fucking Wept.

And then these motherfuckers got mad when the Ukrainians immediately started winning the "Meme war" and rallied almost the whole damned world to their cause.

I grew up hearing tales of exactly how grim life was in the Soviet Union. Hell I spent my young-adult years reading in the newspaper how far in the weeds the Russians were at cleaning up the mess!

And maybe it's just me, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live like that, nor would I want anybody else to have to, either.

I watched this video the other day, of a protest in front of the Russian Embassy in London where some people used washable paint to turn the street into a giant, messy Ukrainian flag. And I was struck by how, if this happened here, Republicans...you know, the so-called free-speech absolutists...would have been flipping out about it if this happened in Washington D.C. instead.

And then this week, in Florida, outright Nazis started harassing Jewish people, openly, in the middle of the goddamned street. Think about that for a second.

The response from Jewish people, liberals and Never Trump conservatives, the supposed "Left" was loud, on target and entirely predictable.

From the Right? 

Crickets.

Actually, Crickets would have been an improvement. At least Crickets make noise. So far as I know "Conservatives" have been utterly silent about this shit.

Freedom, individual rights, liberal democracy, limited government, the right to self-defense, etc. is simply not the future "Conservatives" want.

And they no longer care if we know it, either.

Indeed, they think their shitty view of people and the world is, or should be, self-evident. I have no idea where the sheer cynicism of all this even comes from, it's not what I was taught...and I mean, not ever.

It's like Republicans decided at some point "We are all Ayn Rand."

The Republican rallying cry in the face of continued Soviet onslaught in Ukraine, Ukrainian courage in resisting it, and Democratic leadership in the global response has been "Balkanization, National Divorce, Secession." 

As if they figure the best thing they can do is help the goddamned Commies and reduce the American capability to support Ukraine by reducing America itself by one-third.

And don't tell me their next step wouldn't be to join the new Eastern Bloc themselves, and place the New Red Army right on some inner-American border just to "Own The Libs" or some stupid shit.

Human rights, individual freedoms, and the rights of nations and peoples to exist without some colonizer just barging in and trying to make himself at home...are simply things that don't exist to these fucking people.

"Conservatives" think they have some kind of a right to shit all over the world if they cannot rule it. 

And I mean rule it autocratically, without anybody else having a say...or ever even having the hope of having such. 

It's like these assholes all think every last one of them is some kind of a duke or a king and that pretty much all political and social thought since the 12th century is not real.

So I suppose the reasons for them embracing Putin and Russia are self-evident after all.

And "Conservatives" are mad as hell that people are fighting back, or just doing what they want without consulting them first. Seriously, I wasn't taught to have this kind of entitled mentality, what the fuck is wrong with these people??

As I've said before, I used to be a Christian and a member of the End Times Prophecy movement.

These fucking people are the ones who look at all the shit that's going on in the world and consistently say "It's all falling into place." I wrote about this a couple days ago.

Thing is, based off the old narrative I can see why they would think that, now. But these are the people who've kicked Jesus out of his own religion and replaced Him with an unholy Trinity of Antivaxxer woo, conspiracy theories and Vladimir Putin.

And when it all does come due...when the Coming of the Son of Man is seen like the lightning striking in the East is seen even in the West? I'm here to tell you, these sons of bitches will pick the wrong side and line up against Christ Himself in their mad quest for Power...and don't you forget it.

I can't put it any more plainly than that.

And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword. ~Revelation 6:3-4

Слава Україна!

Five

Playing With Fire (American Revelation XI, Five.)

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

I just saw this a little bit ago.

Mike Lee says "Russia has nukes, we're playing with fire."

No shit, Sherlock.

What the fuck did we do, every single goddamned day back in the days of the Cold War?

Why did I stand watch, day in and day out...mostly on swings and mids because I was always lower in seniority than a whole bunch of people...in the cold and the rain and the snow, for three years of my life. And that's not counting all those trips TDY to places like Saudi Arabia or goddamned Bosnia. 

You know how much miserable shit one has to deal with in the military??

Fuck, maybe I should've been some kind of Republican political type, just sit at my desk and beat off all the goddamn time between taking calls from people trying to bribe my ass. Ain't that what you do?

 "Russia has nukes" is not an excuse to "Let the Russians do whatever the fuck they want."

Seriously, with you pussy-ass bitch Republicans around, having that mentality, why do we even have a United States Armed Forces??

Seems like literally anything other than Culture War jihads against your fellow citizens and scamming for money and power is too goddamned hard for Republicans to want to do it.

What, afraid you'll miss the cocaine orgy if you actually have to do some work. Fuck you motherfuckers!

Reagan Wept.

And I mean that literally, Republicans would rather let their fellow citizens die than have to do any goddamn work.

In fact, some idiot in Idaho said if abuse victims commit suicide or otherwise die, it'll save the government money.

Fuck you, dude, and I say that as a veteran currently receiving mental health care services. Fuck you.

I suppose your goddamn ass thinks it'd have been cheaper if I'd put a bullet in my head a year ago instead of breaking down and going to the doctor and getting started on antidepressants and therapy?

Never mind the distress that would've caused a whole bunch of people. I mean, we're all just proletarians to you, right? Expendable? Human Capital Stock?

Fuck, bro, I used to be a Republican and I can remember being taught to value dignity and human life besides my own. Did I, or the people around me sometimes have bad attitudes about things, or even say some murderous bullshit ourselves now and again? Absolutely. I mean, fuck, I was an Air Force Security Policeman. If my goddamned LT would've heard some of the shit I said at the bar, my career would've been shorter than it was! 

Did we take pride in it, say that shit in public and on the record? Oh hell no.

Because guess what? We had fucking standards. Do people always abide by those standards? No.

And we sure as all hell didn't say fucked up shit with pride, or really believe it as a core value...at least not most of the time. I mean, goddamn bro, you're talking about abuse victims here!

I mean, how much more shitty could you fuckers possibly be??

I mean, goddamn I worked in food service for 25 years and on Third Shift we joked that an HR person wouldn't survive working through the night with us...and I sure as hell would never have said "We should just let people die because it would save the government money"

Let alone said it seriously, in an official capacity, or concerning abuse victims who've already got beat with the short end of the stick by life. What the fuck is wrong with you?!?!

I mean, fuck, some of these Republicans seem to have an absolutely unseemly fascination with child rape, and with enabling that kind of shit.

How did we get from being the nation that won WWII and put a man on the goddamn Moon to being a nation where half of our political system has rotted away to being noting but cowards, perverts and thieves??

This is what Republicans have become, bullies, cowards and perverts who, never the less, do not want to take action to defend even their own damn selves when there's any real risk involved...unless it's the risk that they might have to give a shit about another person or lose profits or political power.

Fuck all of y'all.

Seriously, America, you get what you tolerate. When do we say enough of this bullshit is enough?!?!

Why are Republicans just expected to shit all over everything, and this is accepted??

How many more people gotta have their lives completely jacked by these fucking people's bullshit before we say "No More?" 

This ain't really a fucking question. Fucking do something. Republicans are literally turning into anti-American, perverted commie-surrender-monkeys! This ain't a "Conservative" or "Liberal" issue, it's a question of right and wrong. We're playing with fire by tolerating this crap!

You either believe in civilization or you don't.

Now get after it.

Four

Слава Україна!

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! ~Isaiah 5:20

Calling Good Evil, And Evil Good. (American Revelation XI, Four.)

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

...

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! ~Isaiah 5:20

So, I unexpectedly had to work yesterday, somebody called in.

It was kind of busy. My last customer of the afternoon rush was this skinny little whisp of a pale blonde wearing a knit-cap that said "PSALM 23" on the front of it. She was acting like she was all tweaked out on...something. Paid for $5 in gas and a $2 pack of Grape Cheyenne cigars with a dollar bill and an ass-load of change she'd brought in in what looked like a well-used dime bag that'd spent too much time on the floor of her dirty, beat up 1990's Chevy pickup truck that had a Trump 2020 sticker on the back window. (Yes. I had to look and make sure she was on the right pump, too.) 

Now, I try like hell not to judge...there's lots of people around here in all type of shitty circumstances, always has been that way. People deal with it the best they can, which is often "Not well." Lots of them are still OK people. I suspect this one was an exception.

And she didn't understand why she had to prepay for her gas. 

Having taken note of her hat I explained last summer we had too many drive-offs (I work in the gas station of a big-box store) and some people don't understand something as simple as "Thou Shalt Not Steal." Oops. Biblical reference. 

A light switched on in her eyes.

Like I said...Oops.

So, as I'm counting down this lady's raging fuck-ton of dimes, nickels and pennies I literally get the whole damn Antivax-Q-twisted Biblical "End Times" conspiracy theory rundown while I'm trying to concentrate on counting her change. 

So, I finally had enough and said "Ya know, lady, I have a church background. I was an End Times Prophecy guy myself in the 1990's. I heard all this stuff then. I would have to see real-world evidence that any of this stuff is going on. It's been my experience it's almost never turning out to be the people you think it is who are actually doing this stuff, if anybody's actually doing it."

Her voice became plaintive as she whined about "But the Bible says..." and how it's all lining up and people are "Calling good evil, and evil good." Thankfully about that time I finished counting, put the sorted change in the drawer, handed her a receipt and politely cut her off with "Have a blessed day, Ma'am." with an undertone of Bye. I (thankfully) moved on to dealing with the couple of customers who'd lined up behind her in the meantime.

But yeah, Calling good evil and evil good.

Last weekend there was a "Rage against the war machine" rally in Washington D.C. Mostly far-right nuts and tankies. People flying the Hammer and Sickle, with the Russian "Z" war emblem taped onto their backpacks and their clothes.

Talk about "Calling good evil, and evil good." Like, goddamn, I can't think of a clearer example of exactly that than walking around with a literal symbol of genocide on your backpack at what's allegedly an antiwar rally.

(And I didn't call it that, the Russians did when they said the purpose of the war was to destroy Ukraine's culture, nationhood and people.)

If you're expressing support for Putin, for Soviet Communism (either the old kind or the new minus-social-welfare Putinist version) you ain't against no wars.

When what is "Good" and what is "Evil" to you depends on your partisan political affiliation...well it's pretty clear you've misunderstood entirely what the concepts of good, evil, and morality even are.

You're just against the idea that you might have to go and fight, or that you might have to sacrifice or expend a little energy on somebody else's behalf...since you're most likely openly expressing hatred for America and hoping to outsource the destruction of America, NATO and the West to the goddamned Russians.

Last I checked, that's an evil act. If you live here, you're an American, NOT a Russian. This is your home, the civilization and culture that (for better and worse) gave you life. The conservative ethos I was taught was "My country, right or wrong." I served this country. I didn't do that to see the "America, fuck yeah" crowd turn into a bunch of America-hating dirty commies when culture and politics didn't go their way. 

Fuck you.

Last weekend, evidently President Biden and a small entourage traveled to Ukraine. On Monday...President's Day here, he visited Kiev and met with President Zelenskyy, the two walked around Kyiv with nothing more than a couple soldiers and plainclothes Secret Service agents and a few reporters as air raid sirens blared off and on throughout the day. Jill Biden likewise met with Olena Zelenska and I'm assuming other officials had other necessary face-to-face meetings as well.

Evidently Biden left that night, because yesterday he spoke in Warsaw.

And Oh My Holy God are the MAGA's and the Russians mad about it.

And I'll note, with disgust, that the new Republican "thing" is to beat the Democrats over the head with the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment as if it wasn't blatantly Trump administration deregulation that caused the whole fucking mess!

Literally everything is bad-faith with these fucking people.

And I mean everything.

The people who couldn't even process that they couldn't "Do you know who I am!?!?" a virus, think they're somehow going to be able to do the same to the Russians.

A people historically notorious for not giving a fuck who anybody else is.

It's to the point where they'd rather not defend themselves against an existential threat like Russia because that existential threat is pretending to be "their" kind of "Conservative."

The Russians are doing that while flying the Hammer And Sickle, bros. I remember what that flag stood for. One of these things is not like the other one. 

I remember that flag being a symbol of oppression and atheistic totalitarianism such that conservative Christians (and a lot of other people) believed that Soviet Communism would be the source of all that bad stuff in the End Times. Check out Hal Lindsey's book "The Late Great Planet Earth" to get a feel for the source code for a lot of this stuff.

And while I keep hearing that MAGA is some kind of an upper-class revolt with boat parades and big new diesel trucks decked out with Trump flags and "Proud Boys" toting loads of expensive guns and tacti-cool gear around...that's not my day to day experience of the Cult Of The Orange, these days. 

I knew some people like that when I worked at the casino, but not many. 

My daily experience of this garbage is that the majority of the MAGA's are resentful working-man. beat-up pickup truck types swacked out on cultural grievance and racism, or poor people besotted with religion and/or fried out of their minds on drugs or mental issues or something. (Or worse, some combination of all of the above.)

I'm well aware of the people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kanye West, Kristina Karamo, Mike Lindell and Paul Gosar...not to mention Trump himself. Except for religious nuts like Karamo and White Nationalists like Gosar (who are in my experience best dealt with when you have more guns than they do) those people are mostly outside of my personal experience.

I'm also aware that the usual suspects, you know; the business community, the FOX News crowd, all the old WASP-y Republican shits...the people I DO have more experience at dealing with...seem to prefer Ron DeSantis for a variety of reasons, none of them any good.

I'll likewise take note of the fact that the pig-fucker Randian objectivists have only had somewhat of a resurgence because Trump has continued to fade.

But for all that, Trumpism has made them both bolder and worse, too. I can't recall when I was a kid or young person that anybody publicly said shit like "Yeah, let's just let people die to save money."

Thing is, a lot of their own voters...people these fuckers would rather kill by neglect than anything else...are too fucked up on drugs, racism or religion to even notice that their own lives are potentially on the line here. Although I suppose some of them are, in fact, just fine with sacrificing themselves for Republicanism or White Supremacy or something something Gazpacho and probably think they giving their lives for Jesus or some shit.

But yeah, Calling good evil, and evil good and all that.

I get that these fucking people see LGBT people and racial equality as "evil" (for example.) What I don't get is how they don't see the genocide of people similar to themselves (Seriously, Ukraine is a fairly conservative, religious...and mostly Christian...country) as a far greater evil than whatever social issues they don't like.

Let alone how they don't get that if we let it happen to the Ukrainians, it will keep happening until the Russians get to us.

I used to be a Republican, this bullshit disgusts me. Like I said, if your definitions of good or evil, or of life for that matter depend on political partisanship...you're already Lost.

Because the credo I was trained on was that we leave no one behind.

We're either all Americans or we're not. Together we rise, or none of us do. You either believe in Civilization or you don't.

The fucking problem is, there's a decent number of these people who look at that and say "Okay."

Because they literally don't want or understand concepts like equality and freedom. They don't want to live in a civilization. They want a place...if not a world...where they can just take by force. They would rather hate than eat, they would rather kill and steal than just live.

And somehow, they think Vladimir Putin and his ilk would give them that, and that they'd have a seat at his table rather than be on it.

And when they try and break off a piece of America for themselves and welcome the Russians in as protectors, only for people like MTG end up in Gulags their damn selves, what will all the MAGA's say when their kids are forced to learn Russian in school and they have to submit to Russification or face death or exile, their guns get taken away, and all their "Influencers" and preachers and shit get rounded up and shipped off to God-knows-where by hard-eyed young Slavic men with Kalashnikovs? 

The only thing I can say for sure is that there's a lot more of these fucking people who'll find their solace at the bottom of a bottle or a bag of weed than who'll try and fight back, or make a break for the parts of America and the rest of the world that are still fighting hard against this tyranny.

And far, far too many will look at the ethnic cleansing and executions and cheer. They'd rather live under a murderous tyrant than be free and equal to the rest of us, just so some of the people they don't like get killed, too.

And that's exactly how it'll go when you call good evil, and evil good based on politics rather than empathy, ethics, morality, or some baseline belief in truth.

You want a better nation? You have to be a better citizen.

And this ain't it.

Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on a race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength of the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan

Слава Україна!

Three

President Zelenskyy and all Ukrainians remind the world every day what courage is. They remind us that freedom is priceless. And worth fighting for. For as long as it takes.
~ President Joe Biden

The Prophet And The Mob (American Revelation XI: Three.)

Now at that feast the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner, whom they would.

And they had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas.

Therefore when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ?
For he knew that for envy they had delivered him.

When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.

But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus.

The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas.

Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified.

And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.

When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.

Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.

Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. ~Matthew 27-15-26

I saw this last night at work.

Literally, Charlie Kirk demanding lynch-mob violence against transgender people.

Look, people, I'm an American, I'm a veteran. I have friends who are transgender and I'll be damned if I'm going to stand by and let shit like this happen, or even tolerate somebody bringing it up.

More to the point, I believe in civilization with all the fanaticism of an old man who knows he'd be dead without it.

You motherfuckers want to kill my friends, you're going to have to go through me. Be well aware that I have guns, and I know how to use them. I was trained to kill. I swore and oath to defend my country from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

And make no mistake about it, that's exactly what the fuck these people are.

Book banning, child labor, lynching, rejecting the very concepts of bodily autonomy and personal freedom? Keep in mind these motherfuckers want to do all this shit to Americans. 

I'm an American, I'm not "Christian" or rich, or the "right" kind of white man. I've had enough issues with "Christian Nationalists" and other religious psychos that I'm pretty sure I'm on a list somewhere. If the government of some far-off country were doing this, we'd be going to the United Nations about it and deploying troops with intent to invade. We've done it for less.

Hell, I did time in Bosnia as an Airman. I helped arrest people who did crimes against Humanity like what Charlie Kirk wants to do. You know, war criminals. This shit is personal to me. 

How quickly before people like Charlie Kirk start calling for the lynching of Blacks? Or cisgender Bisexuals, Gays and Lesbians? Or Latinos? Or women who will not accept being Brood Mares for the Movement? Some idiot legislators in Idaho already want to charge medical personnel for administering vaccines.

Trust me, you start taking modern medicine out of the picture there's a million horrible ways to die that don't have anything to do with these morons. 

I had a couple diseases as a kid, Chickenpox being one of them...that would kill an adult. My Mom is 73 years old. She still suffers the after-effects from having Polio as a little girl. And Antivaxxers have already brought that shit back!

Ever seen what happens to somebody when they drink bad water and spend a week or more shitting their guts out? I don't want to live in these fucking people's demon-haunted world!

What do you really think is going to happen if we let these fucking idiots start criminalizing knowledge and modern Medical care?!?!?!

Ya know, perhaps the sickest part of all this shit, too, is that Charlie Kirk loudly claims to be a devotee of a Prophet consigned to be crucified by an angry mob whipped up by scheming religious fanatics.

Make that shit make sense.

Whatever part of America they break off and end up running into the ground better have Russian mercenaries to defend it...because no one who lives there will be healthy enough to fight!

How many fucking people have to die before these fucking people cease to be besotted with this bloodlust and become repulsed by it like normal goddamned human beings??

I get that "Conservatives" don't like the modern world very much...but modernity, with all its constraints, evolved because people got goddamned tired of what went on before.

There's no glory or self-affirmation in death from disease or industrial accident. And the ownership class ain't going to give you a cookie for giving them their Gilded Age back.

In fact they'll probably kill you for knowing how things got from point F, G, and H all the way back to point A.

America didn't ban child labor because Communism or something something Gazpacho, or because so and so wanted to cut into some billionaire's profit margin or harsh some conservative's mojo. No! People got sick and fucking tired of kids getting tore up in factories and mines and they got even more tired of an uneducated population because time came when we needed workers who knew shit.

Trust me, there's a world of difference, skill-set-wise, between farming or mining iron and shaping that iron and other metals and alloying it into aluminum and steel for stuff like building B-24 Liberator bombers that'll be fit to fly and fight. Just to use an example from...ya know, 80 years ago.

And that doesn't even hold a candle to how technological even basic goddamn manufacturing is now. 

The gulf between 1933 and 1943 was bad enough. 

The difference between 1943 and 2023 is the difference between Robert Goddard launching rockets in the lower atmosphere that maybe broke 10,000 feet and Elon Musk's SpaceX developing rockets that can launch and land again on enough of a scale to be commercially viable for supporting space operations in Low Earth Orbit.

Not sure how much Elon himself had to do with that. I'm not sure how you speak coherent sentences without pronouns, much less develop rockets that'll work on a consistent enough basis for scalable industrial applications.

I'm not sure how long even the most basic of modern technologies would last, deprived of supply chains, technical support and upkeep (Not to mention the people who keep this stuff organized) especially vs. the medieval mindset that "Conservative" talkers and "Traditionalist" Catholics and other religious nuts keep encouraging.

Nor am I sure how "Conservatives" think they'd survive the mass starvation resulting from the collapse of food distribution networks, let alone technology.

Fucking lynch mobs and people who's idea of a perfect world is dancing around a fire shouting "Unga Bunga" while their murdered neighbors roast on slats of rusty rebar stuck into the fire are not the kind of people who build starships or even run a functional goddamn civilization.

And I guarantee you, if these assholes are able to divide this country into some kind of urban hyper-tech Technocracy in citadels of glass and steel linked by air transport and the occasional armored convoy, surrounded by an empty countryside and crumbling infrastructure filled with primitives not so far removed from the monkeys in 2001: A Space Odyssey we're probably going to fall behind competitors like Ghana fairly quickly, much less the re-Sovietized Russians...who might just be able to scrounge up enough outdated 1970's technology and weapons to be competitive against the balkanized, reduced America that people like Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk seem to want.

These assholes don't believe in humanity, much less civilization. 

And how many of the people packed into those ivory towers would simply be traumatized refugees who have to be rehabilitated to even function on a basic level, thus turning those places into less the space station in Elysium and more the ragtag, fugitive fleet from Battlestar Galactica?

And the worst part is, people like Charlie Kirk think they'll be the lords in their castles in such a scenario, presumably flinging armies of primitives against civilization under the threat of lash and gun.

Here's the thing, how is that uncivilized barbarity working for the Russians, bros?

Seems like the Ukrainians are hanging in there.

But tell me, do you "Conservatives" have any idea about the other things that might go bump in the night?

They never think that outside the walls there might be civilization of a sort as well, and it'd have to be led by people far worse than their most inflated fantasies of their own toughness. All these bitches think they're going to be the king in the castle...not the catamite strapped to the tailgate of the technical truck for when the local warlord gets horny.

I mean, seriously, you're not really expecting civilizational niceties like attractive women in your fantasies of lynch mobs and genocidal wars and mass death from preventable disease, are you, "Conservatives?"

I'm here to tell you one of the first casualties of burning civilization down is people not smelling like ass all the time.

And I'm just sayin' before you rich fuckers think you'll have all the soap and shit hoarded...I know motherfuckers that'll cut somebody if they fancy black soap ain't available.

Hoarding civilization for yourselves and denying it to the rest of us won't go the way you bastards think it will. People need to eat and stuff, the average person is already like two missed meals from revolution.

And how long would even that unstable situation hold up, before the land and its resources had to be reclaimed by those who understand the need for civilization (mostly in order to maintain it) and for employing all of their people properly. Who's going to win that one? Those who are using all the human resources and talents available? Or the ones following after some bullshit quest for "Purity" where only the "Right" people get to do anything?

Historically...or even in terms of the world as it is today, I can tell you exactly how that works out.

The world is a hard place, Charlie. It's even harder when you're privileged and stupid.

Perhaps more to the point, given how such things go; What the fuck makes you think your ass would be spared by the mob-ocracy?

These fucking people aren't Christians, they're the same fucking people who shouted "Crucify Him!" when Jesus was walking around on this Earth.

But for even worse reasons.

And don't you forget it.

Слава Україна!

Two

Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on a race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength of the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan