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