Death Spiral (No, Part II.)

Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other.
That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions.
In America,"white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. ~Malcolm X, letter written following the Hajj.

I saw this last night.

Rep. Justin Jones said that a bunch of white TN legislators called him "Uppity."

For fuck's sake I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard that word spoken aloud in my life. (And while I'm at it, yes, one of those incidents was in Tennessee.)

What do these racist clowns think this is? 1953?

Evidently, some of them said this on camera.

I don't know about you but I grew up thinking that shit was dead and I'll be 50 this year.

And mind you, the two Black reps (Both of whom will likely simply be reappointed and then run again in special elections) are being shitcanned for protesting gun violence in the wake of a mass shooting at a Christian school.

For some reason it made me think of Adam Kinzinger's own family disowning him and saying he was "Of The Devil" for politically rejecting and voting to impeach Trump.

Fascism and Racism are more important to these fucking people than their own families.

I'm here to tell you, if Christian leaders collectively took a stand against racism (and many have) these fuckers would reject Christianity and Christ, too.

Because nothing is ever really about what these absolute motherfuckers say it's about.

Because the racism (and other petty bigotries) are more important to them.

Even if they can't express that shit in public, we're down to where they're fighting tooth and claw to hang on to even the idea of that bullshit...in the hope that they can use the fight itself to claw back public acceptability for being a fucking racist.

The thing is, even though he really didn't do that much for it (and indeed, unintentionally probably did more to wreck that shit than anybody else) to these fucking people Trump has become a cultural meme representing base Patriarchal White (fake) "Christian" Supremacy, Southern Fried. 

This despite the fact that the son of a bitch was a lifelong New Yorker before he basically retired and moved to Florida.

Validation is where you find it, I guess.

I literally cannot stress it enough that these sons of bitches would rather march proudly into HELL  and burn for all of Eternity than believe in a Brown, Jewish, Poor Savior. But it's become very, very difficult to ignore that that's what Jesus Christ was.

Why the fuck do you think these fucking racists are doing their damnedest to deify and glorify Donald Trump?? 

And worse, if they have to, these assholes will wage war against their own government...even against their own children to preserve the shitty little high they get off of thinking they're "better" than other people for stupid, arbitrary, utterly nonsensical reasons.

And trust me, it absolutely doesn't matter that the kids and staff in that school were doing literally everything right according to the rules As Published.*

Rules...and beliefs and religions and shit...that don't matter worth a good goddamn when push comes to shove. These fucking people, for the most part, cannot say what's really on their minds in most places and for the most part they know it.

They know their beliefs are so shitty that they can't share them with the rest of the class, lest they lose their place in the magical city. They know...oh, trust me, they know...that short of breaking down America's body politic yet further, the bloody revolution they whack off to the idea of will be bloody (and short) indeed, and that they will lose. 

So they try all kinds of manipulative bullshit instead.

They simply refuse to see that other people are tired of it.

And they're mad as hell that other people are fighting back.

Worse, then they try like hell to convince themselves that the reason people don't like them isn't because we know all this stuff and want no part of it. 

No, it's "because radical left wing activists on college campuses" or some bullshit. Bitch, of the two degrees I have, I graduated with the first one still being a conservative Republican.

But I was never these people's kind of "Republican."

Nobody "indoctrinated" me into hating Republicans, or liberalism, no. I already...as a conservative Republican...hated conspiracy theories and racism and had a very bad experience with manipulative right-wing Christianity. Once those three things became the Republican Trinity, I was out.

And I'm still on the conservative end of the Democratic spectrum. That said, I've no problem with the rest of it. I'd sure like to keep my guns, among other things. But you know who's making that ethically harder with every goddamned shooting?

Republicans are, that's who.

I don't hunt anymore, I only go out and target-shoot maybe once a year, and the main reason I still have my guns is self-defense and the fact that most of the ones I have left also belonged to my Dad and my Grandpa.

Increasingly, it looks like I'm going to eventually end up defending myself against Republicans (in general) and the religious fanatics of the Cult of Dis Pater and Radical Trumpism in particular, and probably no small number of the rabidly insane, either.

But Republicans be all like "People would just love our policies if we could just get liberals to stop talking." And "Wah Wah they don't like us!"

You're right. I don't. 

I say this as somebody who used to be a conservative Republican!

More to the point, you earned that status. It wasn't anything that liberals did. My vision and my hearing might be getting worse but I ain't blind or deaf. (That said, I'm pretty sure even a deaf ferret could understand that all this evil bullshit is, in fact, evil bullshit.)

More to the point the fact that I have severe tinnitus started with military service.

The oath I swore was to the Constitution.

A whole bunch of my brothers and sisters in arms were Black or Latino. One of them was a Muslim. One of the LT's I had was a Jewish woman. When I was a squad leader, one of my best guys was a gay Fundamentalist Christian AAPI fella (But we weren't supposed to talk about his sexuality.)

That "Rest Of Us" that you Republicans like to disenfranchise (if you can't just ignore us) or try and gerrymander or manipulate away so y'all can keep power? Fuck you, we're Americans too.

I say "No." Fuck you. If we're not all free, none of us are. The whole point of America is that everybody gets a say in our society.

Being a better class of slave than some of the other slaves means you're still a slave, Republicans.

And we're tired of you and your ideas of hierarchy and slavery and servitude to one's "Betters."

Servitude, even if y'all hate each other. (And most of you do.)

This is America. We are not what we are born, but what we have it in ourselves to be. That's the whole damn point.

A hell of a lot of us went out and earned our keep while your alleged heroes like Clarence Thomas just sit on they butts and get gifts up the ying-yang from Republican billionaires so he can be not much more than a mouth to speak the words of others in y'all great con-game against America, a whore to make the proper noises at the proper times for the pleasure of others, an empty man whose Blackness is nothing more than used as a shield so "Conservatives" can say they ain't racist.

I mean, goddamn, at least Antonin Scalia, as bad as he was, knew how to act like a human being once in awhile, could and would talk to the other side, and really believed in a few things.

These people? They'd be card-carrying Communists if it got them money and power and obscured their shitty political and social agendas enough to fool the mob.

But minority rule, racism and wealth concentration ain't a trinity I want to believe in, yo. 

That's a death spiral. I don't want that anywhere, much less in my own country.

Fuck That!

The fight for freedom ain't just over there. 

I don't care how you look or what you say. I can see what you do. Enough is enough! 

Civis Americanus Sum, I am an American Citizen.

And I'm damned tired of your bullshit, conservatives, damned tired of it.

I'm not the only one.

Your move, motherfuckers.

Слава Україна!

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27

One

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the House of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors. . . .

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana.
We were truly all the same (brothers) -- because their belief in one God had removed the "white" from their minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and the 'white' from their attitude.I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man -- and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their "differences" in color. With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called "Christian" white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster -- the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most. . . . I said, "The brotherhood! The people of all races, color, from all over the world coming together as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God. . . . All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God.

~Malcolm X, letter written following the Hajj.