Joyless (Invasion Of The Booty Smoochers II, Trump Arrest Edition.)

Reporter: Mr. Said, how do you feel?

Kareem Said: How do I feel? I feel joyless. My brothers remain behind. Imprisoned, suppressed. I don't just mean my Muslim brothers, I mean every single man that will sleep in here tonight, that was cut off from everything that he loves. Cut off from his own self. You know, as the word went around that the Governor was gonna give somebody clemency, I saw a rift develop as each inmate wished himself to be the chosen one. The longing to be free became as palpable as the food that we eat. But it is a meal that I am being served right now. And I am Muslim. And Allah does not allow me to swallow certain things. Allah does not allow me to take scraps from the hands of a man such as this. A man who is corrupt and immoral. A man who denigrates the gift of clemency just as he violates the principles of justice. A man that gave the order that caused the death of eight people. And so, Governor Devlin, because even the cost of freedom can be too high, I refuse your pardon!

 ~Kareem Said, from the HBO series Oz, Season 2, Episode 8 "Escape From Oz."

Donald Trump was arrested today, and indicted over his hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels in 2016.

How do I feel?

After all this time, after all the words I've written that I'd rather have written about someone, something, hell, damned near anything else?

It's Tuesday.

I feel nothing.

I feel joyless.

What about the million-or-so of us who didn't even live to see this day, because of Trump's bungling of the COVID-19 response? I know people who died.

This shit should've happened years ago, and it shouldn't have been the big deal that it is.

Fuck that guy.

Fuck him, fuck his cult, fuck everything he stands for, fuck his enablers, fuck his supporters. 

Fuck Republicans and the Republican Party for burning down everything they ever stood for because of this motherfucker.

Fuck Republicans for thinking our goddamned legal system from the Constitution on down is just some kind of tit-for-tat game, some kind of ratfuck circus where they can do what they want and use real laws to attack or smear other people, rather than a system of checks and balances and law that applies equally to themselves.

And fuck Democrats and the Justice Department and the whole judicial system for the fact that this is only happening now. 

It fucking should have happened two years ago in a Washington D.C. court for far more serious crimes.

The motherfucker tried to overthrow the government and destroy America, for fuck's sake!! 

Does that quite spell if out for you?

I'm nobody, a middle-aged Air Force veteran with probably more bad things than good to my name. 

If I'd done 1% of the shit Donald Trump did, they'd have arrested my ass that day.

I'd have got booked and mug-shotted like a common criminal, because that's what I was. 

They'd have left me sit in a cell for a few days with no shower until right before court, subsisting on bug juice and jail sandwiches and I'd have a court-appointed public defender who might or might not be worth anything. Also, unless somebody from the local paper was in court that day covering the proceedings it'd get no media attention at all.

I would, at the most, get my name in the paper.

That's another thing, fuck the wall-to-wall coverage of this horseshit and fuck the attempts at pure mobocracy by Republicans like George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

You know, efforts to gin up insurrection and protest over the arrest of Donald Trump for doing actual crimes that would...that should...get most of us put away for a long time without any questions asked past those needed during the trial.

It's not like their attempted coups, or for that matter efforts to force their bullshit totalitarian worldview on the rest of us have even stopped. They've just been knocked down to the State level for now.

And if they succeed even once there, we're looking at the struggle going national again, and probably kinetic in very short order.

Because that is what "Conservatives" have already said they want.

And far too often the rest of America just shrugs and gives these fucking people what they say they want. Fuck all that. 

Learn the word "No." 

And use it.

Then be prepared to back that shit up with force.

It's literally the only thing these fucking people want or understand.

Yesterday, protestors in Florida who were peacefully protesting the Republican 6 week abortion ban were arrested, including Democratic House Minority Leader Lauren Book and former Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, presumably on bullshit misdemeanor charges.

And that ain't shit compared to the fact that the Tennessee legislature wants to vote to expel three Democratic Reps for protesting for gun control.

They're doing this in the face of massive protests in Nashville in response to that school shooting at a Christian school recently.

Six people were killed, and Republicans spent the next several days trying to blame it on "The Left" and transgender people because, ya know, facing the fact that nuts have too-easy of access to weapons is too hard.

And because they'd love to be able to weaponize the power of the State against everybody they don't like.

Which, funny enough, is pretty much everybody.

That's another thing, Christians. Don't think current Republicans are your friends, either. 

They don't give a shit if you die anymore than they care if anybody else does (So long as it isn't them.)

This is a movement of cowards, sociopaths and thieves that basically has all but declared a deranged incompetent wannabe dictator as its personal Antichrist Superstar. 

Think about that, for a second.

Think about the fact that some bullshit ass TN GOP legislator stood there and threatened to shoot kids protesting gun violence.

The young folks are already tired of getting murdered, dude. Keep this shit up and you're going to create a movement that's going to negatively affect a lot of gun owners like me who don't want to shoot anybody.

And we're not going to blame them, we're going to blame you.

Because cowardly little fascist chucklefucks like yourself should have access to neither political power nor weapons as far as most of us are concerned.

But because you can gin up a bunch of fear and throw out racist bullshit and religious twaddle to impress a bunch of rubes who are even dumber than you are, you're a legislator instead of the two-bit petty criminal you'd be in any kind of sane nation.

Fuck you!

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the constant threats to literally everyone's rights, I'm tired of the constant threats to my Mom's social security and my own and her partner's earned veteran's benefits. I'm tired of the fact that literally everything with Republicans is bad faith.

I'm tired of the fact that you motherfuckers, by default, want to have a government whose word can't be trusted, either domestically or internationally...and you think such arrangements would give you power instead of making us all pariahs in the world.

When the military made me swear that oath to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic, it was your ass that shit was talking about. 

I've had it with this Yokel Haram bullshit!

This is America, you do not have a right to force your ways on other people or shoot people who disagree with you!

You either believe in civilization or you don't! You either believe in freedom or you don't!

People throughout history fought and died for consistent, rational systems of laws that applied to all the people and treated all citizens the same, for States and systems whose actions could be confidently predicted by business and citizens, and thus enable prosperity and security for far more than just The Few.

People died for this stuff, in some cases, millions of them died.

Just stop and think about that for fuck's sake! Even something as simple as the right to vote, to have any say in your own life was purchased by watering the Tree Of Liberty with enough blood so that it grew into a big enough stick to beat the bad guys down with.

And modern "Conservatives" almost never fail to spit on that by retroactively taking the wrong side every chance they get, often for nothing more than money and props from other idiots.

They never fail to disrespect those who shed blood for freedom.

Our freedoms and rights weren't given to us by some god or given to us as gifts by the Powerful because we sucked they dicks just right. People fought for that stuff, people made those in power give it up, or killed them and gave Power to somebody else, or to the People.

Of such struggles was the modern world fearfully and wonderfully made. 

That's what things like Finland joining NATO today, or the Ukrainians fighting for freedom against Russia even mean.

Most people got tired of fighting off the Barbarians all the time, because it's hard to live, much less have the freedom to do anything else when life is constant conflict. And if you think that's bad, living under the Barbarians never fails to be worse.

If you only believe in those things for yourself, civilization and freedom ain't what you want!

It sickens me that too often, it's the institutionalists who claim to revere revealed Truth and the wisdom of our ancestors that could give a shit. 

These people are literally not conservative. I'd be willing to bet most of them don't even know the definition of that word.

All the stuff that word implies matters to them only so far as it can be used to hurt other people.

Feelings, in the moment, matter more. The cruelty is the point.

And, bitch, in the world you think you want...your power and wealth, not to mention your life, is only going to last as long as it takes for the bigger gang with the meaner warlord to notice you're there.

You might not like civilization and society, or Truth for that matter...but it's all that keeps most of us alive and free, including you, more likely than not.

It's just that goddamned motherfucking simple!

Why is this so hard for you??

I'm tired of all these bored, debased, greedy motherfuckers trying to undermine all that because they didn't get to be famous any other way.

But you know what I'm even more tired of?

Other people who supposedly know better spending so much time and energy trying to justify this bullshit, usually for profit. 

That's what killed Rome, the damned Barbarians would never have gotten the power if the Romans hadn't gotten fat and lazy and sozzled on intrigue and religion. 

They got so much that way, that they abandoned civic pride and martial spirit. John Gibbon wrote that the reason Rome fell was giving up the civic duty of the Senate and the courage and honor of the battlefield for the intrigues of the Church and the secrets of the Confessional. They outsourced stuff like the actual fighting to German and other Barbarians. 

And then, quite often, the Romans tried to weasel out of paying them.

The Republican Party can't even say that much, they fell because of greed, lust for power and stupidity. America might yet be saved, but the Republican Party sure won't.

Freedom isn't free, and if we don't stop listening to any old conman who tries to say they'll do the work of life for us, the same kind of bullshit will destroy us too. 

I'm tired of people who allegedly should know better disparaging citizenship, duty, expertise and service to others, as if grifting and kissing ass for profit is so much better of a way to run a society?

Especially when they do it for no better reason than cheap internet fame or political points. That's what gave us Trump.

It's not the Barbarians at the gates, it's the Invasion of the goddamned Booty Smoochers.

If you want a better nation, you have to be a better citizen. You have to understand concepts like duty and be willing to follow through on them.

Haven't we learned already, that civilization hangs by narrow enough threads?

That's all, and I'm just damned tired of it.

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

And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign south and west as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas, that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A. we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea, Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama