Better Nation, Georgian Edition (Trailer Park Rome, Three.)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

~United States Declaration Of Independence.

...

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 race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan

I just saw this.

Massive protests in Georgia, expected to continue, over a Russian-style "Foreign Agent" law that many people view as authoritarian. These people are facing down cops and water cannons and their own government with peaceful protests and EU flags. Somebody said this is likely to be yet another of those iconic moments in the struggle against authoritarianism and fascism. I think so, too.

If you want a better nation, you have to be a better citizen, as Stonekettle has famously said.

If you want a better world, you have to be a better person.

And sometimes you have to fight for it.

Meanwhile, here in America...

Republicans cannot be bothered to sign on to a statement denouncing White Supremacy. Which, mind you, is an ideology most Americans will at least say they're against. The very words bring to mind men marching in white robes and hoods, lynching, mass murder and the Cross of Jesus Christ turned into nothing but a flaming lawn ornament.

With good reason, too.

This is the image the white supremacists themselves make considerable effort to keep showing us...and in fact, many of the crypto-white-supremacists cannot wait for the big reveal...when they tell you, to your face, that they are just more of the same. It's like an addiction for these motherfuckers.

America, I'm going to repeat this as long as it takes: You get what you tolerate. I'm sick of these smarmy old racist pigfuckers. 

But, to be honest, I'm even more tired of the resentful racist rural white bubbas and the WASP-ish suburban housewives that repeatedly vote for this horseshit!

Isn't "Standing up against their own government" something Republicans (or at least their base) constantly fantasize about doing?

Or is that only really true when the other Party is in power?

Republicans may or may not personally share your petty hatreds. But they are certainly, in both the long term and the short term, using them to fuck you. They don't refuse to sign onto a resolution against White Supremacy because they like that shit. I mean, they do, but not for reasons beneficial to their voters. They like it because it's an easy thing to use to fuck you over. 

They know they can use racism as a wedge issue so that, to paraphrase Lyndon Johnson, they can get the shitty little haters to empty their own pockets instead of having to pick said pockets themselves.

That's right, they're too lazy to steal from you their damn selves. They want you to rob from your own future, for them.

And you do it. You let them. Think about that for a second.

Like I keep saying, Republicans save the most of their contempt...for their own people and for each other.

So yeah, my fellow white people; Republicans might hate Black people...but that sure doesn't mean they don't hate you, too.

People in Georgia are standing up against their own government, singing the Ukrainian national anthem and waving the EU flag, standing in solidarity against Russia and Russian-adjacent authoritarianism.

Republicans cannot be bothered to stand up for their own country, let alone all the people who live in it.

And the day will come when they, having thus far failed to overthrow America, will try to shatter it instead.

Republicans hate Trump just like everybody else does, and as all this Fox News crap revealed by the Dominion lawsuit has revealed they hate the MAGA's too. They just see these things...yet again...as wedge issues they can use to pry apart Democracy, to increase their own profit margins, and to install themselves as the Dukes and Earls of a new Dark Age.

America, it's Constitution, its democracy and its Enlightenment principles be goddamned, as far as they're concerned. Steve Bannon and Vladimir Putin are much sexier. They don't like other Americans. They probably looked at the same video I did, of Russian Babushkas saying all the Poles and Ukrainians should die and yearning for the glories of the Soviet Union and said "THAT'S the 'People' we want!"

People who literally don't give a shit about their own self-interest, so long as they get to be slaves to the Tsar of the world...or the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but I digress.

Red States are doing shit that'd have Europeans...or Communist Chinese or Georgians or Ukrainians...or Indonesians or South Koreans, for that matter...in the streets. Not necessarily because they "like" liberal education or transgender people but because people in most other countries understand overreach by the State when they fucking see it, and they know it will eventually come for them.

And, in some of those countries...like China...burning shit and rioting in the streets and storming the parliament is the only way to even get the government's attention. We're not talking Astroturf contrived manipulated January 6th type shit here...we're talking an actual fight, where it's not a mob on the side of a dictator-wannabe President that just got voted out.

We're talking regular people who don't want the State up their ass anymore than it already is.

Isn't that what American "Conservatives" spent 40 years pretending to be??

But no. They weren't, not really.

Americans keep being just fine with that, just so long as the State is up somebody else's ass even more. All this anti-government, libertarian talk is just camouflage for White Supremacy, for weaponizing "Big Government" against those that one does not like.

If most of us physically saw 100 people beating up one gay or transgender person we'd be appalled, try to intervene, or at least call the cops.

Why is that shit somehow different when it's Republican government policy or when we get a package with rainbow packing tape??

When I say "Imagine living in a country where you might have to get shot or be among thousands of people sent to Gulags to even hope to effect change" (And keep in mind, people do this) far too many White Americans smugly imagine they will always be the ones on the "right" side of Power.

It could never happen to them.

Until it does. They're setting the precedents right now and they don't even see it. It's not the Mark Of The Beast when it happens to other people.

And I've been to countries where it didn't matter that people were White. The only difference between a Bosnian Serb and a Bosnian Muslim was culture and religion. That was enough for mass murder.

Why are so many of us just such small minded, judgmental little chucklefucks?? Is having somebody to disapprove of really more important to you than your own goddamned rights?

Republicans are turning into shitty little Totalitarians who are about half a step from openly saying "It's Not the Mark Of The Beast when we do it!"

And there's people who'll believe that.

Because Republican ideology...whatever it is at the moment...is far more important to them than God or Jesus or the Bible ever was.

Far too many of us care more about our own relative status than our own freedom.

And then we get mad and blame the wrong people when right-wing elites who worship Dis Pater in secret but call that demon "Jesus Christ" on Sunday mornings and to our faces turn around and use that shit to fuck us all over even more.

Then they commit treason, in the open, all but demanding that the Hammer and Sickle be raised over the White House (because they "approve" of Putin) and then these sons of bitches call it patriotism, and the mob roars its approval.

They're fine with Trailer Park Rome having a Russian Caesar, just so long as it's some Black or Transgender person getting stomped into the dirt, first.

They don't even see the jackboots lining up behind them.

And I'm tired of it.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

If you won't stand up, if you won't stand and deliver, you get what you tolerate. Why do people in Georgia care more about what I was taught was the "American" way than fully a third of Americans do?

Sooner or later we're all going to have to fight.

Or be chained.

Слава Україна!

Two

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