Enemies Of America (Left Behind Is A Lie III, Three.)

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

I saw this while I was at work.

It's bullshit. No, there are not US soldiers fighting in Ukraine. We've provided munitions, weapons, various forms of support, yes. But no American soldiers are on the ground in Ukraine. (Tucker Carlson apparently thinks a small SOF detachment at the Embassy is there for some kind of combat purposes. It's not, they're there to keep track of logistics and make sure shit's going where it's supposed to.)

But so what, if there were? 

You fuckers are telling me that y'all are perfectly fine with Putin's New Soviet Union conquering Ukraine, then the rest of Europe...you know, OUR NATO Allies...and then presumably destroying the USA because they're sure as hell not going to stop there?

Of course, that is exactly what "Conservatives" are saying. 

Reagan fucking Wept.

They'd rather be slaves to the Hammer And Sickle than free and equal citizens under the Stars And Stripes if that means Black folks or LGBT people are going to get any.

They don't care if they're slaves, they just want to be a better class of slave than some of the other slaves.

And make no mistake about it, that's exactly what this comes down to.

This Airman that leaked all these classified documents leaked them to a Discord group for video gamers who like to share racist memes.

So naturally, Republicans like MTG and Randy Quaid will try and treat him like some kind of American hero.

And even former Republicans like Denver Riggleman or Rick Wilson...or me, for that matter, aren't "White" enough for these fucking people. 

I mean, shit, the average Ukrainian is white, Christian, and conservative...but also committed to democracy and freedom and their own right to exist, and those three things are all most Americans of any color, creed or faith want, too. Seriously, most of us have enough to deal with just getting through life and don't want to be bothered about it. (Is that so hard, really?)

But that's anathema to the fanatics currently running the Republican Party into the ground, who are very likely to try and break America in two over this same old bullshit in the next couple of years. God forbid you just want to live your life without these motherfuckers getting to pass judgment on it.

And these fucking assholes have no self-respect so they don't actually care what they have to do in order to get that kind of power, they just want to have it.

They don't even really want to do anything with it, other than enrich themselves and feel special. These clowns literally want to be a ruling class of 70 million people with some kind of "Special Rights" to boss the rest of us around. Yeah, as if that wouldn't end in some rather targeted interpersonal violence, and very quickly...because the rest of "We The People" would get very tired of having to deal with 20% of the country trying to be petty tyrants over the rest of us.

And make no mistake about it, these fuckers think their allegiance to Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin or their alleged status as "Christians" or "Conservatives" or "Republicans" entitles them to that kind of shit.

I'm here to tell you, it's things like the New Deal and Civil Rights (and Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution, and LGBT rights, etc. etc.) that are why America didn't have itself another bloody revolution in the 20th Century. And nobody but a few rich Republicans really wants to go back to the way things were before.

It's not Civilization and they're not Rights if only one group gets to have anything.

But modern Republicans can't understand that view of life, and they see Russian Imperialism or pre-Civil Rights Segregationist horse shit as something to aspire to...and apparently they see the former as a way to get the latter back.

And this is why certain Red States are galloping hard toward horror and secession, and why These Fucking People are absolutely going to try that shit again. They simply think they're too good to have to live with the rest of us, or have to even explain why we should do what they say.

Not only that, but they're dumb enough to think they'd have some safe special little place in the Russkiy Mir instead of getting themselves a 9mm hole in the head in the basement of some Neo-Confederate version of Lefortovo Prison while their kids are forced to learn Russian in school, their church gets torn down and replaced with a Russian Orthodox one and their neighbors get deported to Siberia to fates that future regimes will only be able to guess at.

But the truth is that they don't care as long as the Blacks and the LGBT folks somehow get it worse.

These idiots would literally trade America for the privileges of Dhimmitude in the face of some stupid Communist-tinged Russian Orthodox Jihad than be free if everybody gets to be free.

Being a slave to the Caesars ain't on my bucket list. If stopping exactly that has to be, so be it.

Civis Americanus Sum, and don't you forget it.

Republicans seem to have forgotten that. Their bigotry was more important.

And in the meantime they absolutely cannot wait to tell us how much they hate America and would love nothing better than to shoot their way out of it and wall themselves off from the rest of us in some bullshit neo-Confederacy that the Russians would take over faster than you can say "KGB."

Freedom isn't Free. Sometimes, you have to fight for it. As a veteran myself, I'm really fucking tired of the fact that Republicans have become the people who don't appreciate their own freedom. 

In the same way, both in the military and out, I learned that respect is earned by every action, every day. Republicans have forgotten this too, and think respect is something to which they are entitled. They are not.

I cannot help but think of my buddy Dave, the CO of the Ogitchedaw Warrior Society and a Vietnam veteran who fought in the Ia Drang Valley and when he told me "Imagine what it's like to know you have to serve the Land, even though it's no longer your own. That's what the warrior spirit is."

The Ukrainians had to live like that for hundreds of years, is it any wonder they don't want to go back?

So why should the rest of us?

Goddamn, I think at this point if Republicans found out that Vladimir Putin was the Beast of Revelations and Donald Trump was his False Prophet...they'd be lining up out the door to take the goddamned Mark.

Because their bullshit for at least a generation has all been a lie. All of it.

But only in Putin and Trump have they found "Leaders" on the same page as the goddamned mob.

You get what you tolerate, America. Remember that. There's going to be a test, Soon.

Two

Слава Україна!

When I am dead, bury me

In my beloved Ukraine,

My tomb upon a grave mound high

Amid the spreading plain,

So that the fields, the boundless steppes,

The Dnieper's plunging shore

My eyes could see, my ears could hear

The mighty river roar.

When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears

Into the deep blue sea

The blood of foes ... then will I leave

These hills and fertile fields --I'll leave them all and fly away

To the abode of God,

And then I'll pray .... 

But until that day I know nothing of God

Oh bury me, then rise ye up

And break your heavy chains

And water with the tyrants' blood

The freedom you have gained.

And in the great new family,

The family of the free,

With softly spoken, kindly word

Remember also me.

~Taras Shevchenko