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

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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