Thursday, June 29, 2023

Thirty Pieces Of Silver (Pride Month, Twelve.)

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.

And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.
They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:
But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.
And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.
And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.
But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.
And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.
Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.
But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.
Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. ~Matthew 25:1-13

I saw this earlier.

Matt Walsh trying to claim "The Left Has Lost Control Of The Narrative."

Wut?

I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean what he thinks it means, and I think he's got the two sides mixed up.

States banning gender-affirming care are now 0-6 in court.

Yet "We are totally winning the argument against gender ideology..."

Huh?

The court rulings seem to say otherwise.

Matt Walsh's narrative is bullshit.

But of course he has to stick with it because if he didn't people might not give him money.

All this far-right bullshit is a scam, and for all their big talk these fucking people melt like ice sculptures in the sun whenever they come up against a situation that they can't just appeal to prejudice or bullshit their way through.

And that last is why they occasionally do win somewhere.

Just so long as they have enough of a Conservative Asshole judge.

Today SCOTUS gutted the shit out of Affirmative Action, banning race as a consideration in admissions in most cases (except for US Military service academies) while preserving legacy admissions and a whole bunch of other stuff...which many see (rightly or wrongly) as favoring White people.

Not that I think it'll make that much of a difference, except to be seen as an excuse for jackass bullshit somewhere.

Very often, these days, the kids with the grades to get in, the determination, drive and smarts to survive, and then to succeed *Are* the People Of Color. Very often, it's the White kids...most especially the rich White kids...who go to college mostly to party it up, and that's that. I used to live and work in a college town, and I was a part-time University student there for several years also. 

Because I found it an absolute bitch to do School and work third shift.

But all that kept me there long enough to have a good idea of how things really worked, at least. 

In those years I overheard more than one rich white kid loudly demanding that Mommy send them X-ridiculously large amount of money after they'd obviously spent whatever they had at the bar and the local meat-market dance club...usually I'd hear this while I was waiting in line to get the money order for my rent, or, ya know, doing some other normal working-stiff stuff. 

Let's just say more than one of these fucking idiots got told "Get A Job!" loud enough that Mommy or Daddy or whoever was on the other end of the line could hear.

It's those people who need to be told shit like that, not the young woman ahead of you in the checkout line with the kids, the EBT card, and the cart full of groceries, still wearing her work uniform and you know from that what department she's in and how hard she has to work.

I rather suspect within a couple years we're going to see "Not Enough White Kids In College" ginned up as the next bullshit Right-Wing social problem, this despite the fact that there were a bunch of obvious White people in Walsh's own thread saying that going to college is a waste of money and shit.

So they know how it's going to go, and they're already moving the goalposts. They just want to be seen as being mean to People of Color in general...and Black people in particular. The comments I saw on Matt Walsh's post were not particularly subtle on that.

And the bigotry against LGBTQ people always goes hand-in-hand with the fake-Christian-Nationalism, with the racism, with the religiosity of the Cult...with this-that-and-the-other-thing and you can't just check one box anymore if you want to be "In The Club" you have to buy the whole package.

Because if you don't accept it all, you're going to get kicked out sooner or later. You can be So Republican as to have once been one of the Party's great standard-bearers and still get called a Communist, or a Democrat, or a RINO.

I'm not joking, I literally saw some Twitter Rando call Paul Ryan (of all people) a Communist last night, for the "crime" of not supporting Trump.

Nothing Matters, not even the Cause. Hell...I used to be a Republican and I couldn't even tell you what the Cause is anymore besides an unholy Trinity of Base Bigotry, Donald Trump and Whatever Vladimir Putin Wants.

Modern "Conservatism" is a Cult of Death and Wealth, its God not so much Yahweh but Dis Pater, chthonic Roman deity (and thus classical Christian demon) of the Underworld and of Wealth mined from the Earth.

And modern "Conservatism" is full of fucking people whose main objective isn't a more conservative country, a stricter moral code or a tighter fiscal policy...let alone America's place in the world...but instead, how much fame and money they can suck up for themselves.

Literally, often enough, to the exclusion of everything else, including good sense or self-preservation.

The Thirty Pieces Of Silver is more important to them.

Like, seriously do these fucking morons think that if the Russians conquer Ukraine, that they're going to stop there? Why would they?? At this point they have too much socked into their own narrative of Imperial Expansionism and irridentism. If Ukraine goes, the Baltic States and Poland are next, then at least half of Germany...and there's plenty of Tankies who'd see them go further...including here

Does Marge think the Russians would let her keep whatever special place she thinks she has? Hell no, they'd take it away and send her to Siberia just to show their Power. 

The whole damn world is fortunate enough that Russia can't even defeat Ukraine, and hell, came close enough to losing a war against itself last weekend. Likely, Putin has been weakened as a result.

But as long as Putin gives people like Marge money, they'll keep spewing his bullshit.

As long as it gets them money from the ignorant yahoos that donate to them, they'll keep talking up a bunch of unreality.

And that's why LGBT people, among others, are going to win this thing. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but it will be so.

Because it's the 30 pieces of silver that's more important to these lying traitors.

Happy Pride Month, y'all.

Слава Україна!

You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom; then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it. ~Malcolm X. 

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

...


Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests,

And said unto them, What will Ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.

And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him.

Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the Passover?

And he said, Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand; I will keep the Passover at thy house with my disciples.

And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them; and they made ready the Passover.

Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve.

And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.

~Matthew 26:14-21

 







Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Paul Ryan, Communist (American Revelation XIII, 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

...

But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism. ~Paul Ryan, Speech at a 2005 Atlas Society event.

I got up to make some food, while my cheesy rice was cooking, I logged into Twitter and this was the first thing I saw.

Paul Ryan, Democrat pretending to be a Republican.

Paul Ryan, "Communist."

Paul "Dead-eyed Granny Starver" Ryan, 2012 Republican Vice-Presidential Nominee.

We're talking about a guy here who made his Congressional staffers read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" and who literally spoke at the Ayn Rand society and assorted other Objectivist gatherings.

This is a guy who's entire bit was that he was some kind of Republican technocratic policy wonk who was going to reinvent the Federal Government in the image of Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand and by god, he was going to persuade us of the rightness of being a selfish bastard-flavored bastard if it killed somebody.

I mean for fuck's sake, Romney/Ryan was Corporate America's goddamn dream ticket! Combined with the then-cresting Tea Party wave, that shit was probably the closest we will ever get to any sort of "Libertarian" government.

You know, the kind a lot of these MAGA's say they want.

Yeah, sure, things started to go a little downhill with Mitt's infamous "47%" comment, and when Ryan himself got rhetorically disassembled and put back together in embarrassing positions by then Vice-President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (Who is now your President, bitches.) But dude would go on to replace John Boehner as the Speaker Of The House until he was replaced by Nancy Pelosi in January of 2019.

Hell, I have a video somewhere saved off of YouTube, one of Chuck Colson's old "Two Minute Warning" spots where he preached against Ayn Rand...because of people like Paul Ryan.

For...honestly one of the last Republicans that I find understandable, he had a pretty damned good run.

 And I can't...I mean...I really can't even think of anybody who defined the whole Tea Party thing better.

But Paul Ryan has limits, apparently, and he's never particularly supported Trump. (And this has never been a big secret.)

Which, to the MAGA's is, of course, apostasy before their GOD!!!

Fuck this silly bullshit. Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989. I know, I was there. I watched the Wall come down live on CNN in November of 1989.

And I'm tired of hearing about it.

Communism. Is. Not. A. Thing. Anymore.

Stop laughing, Vlad.

Seriously, if Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand acolyte extraordinaire and former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives isn't good enough for these motherfuckers I don't know who the hell is.

The Republican Party is, yet again, showing itself to be nothing but the Cult Of Trump. The Mango Messiah basically ate the goddamned Republican Party alive from the inside out, and nobody who could do anything even tried to stop that shit at the time.

Republicans...you created this horde of mindless ravening Zombies.

And it looks like they're going to eat you first, have fun.

Слава Україна!

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields

With Apologies To Sodom and Gomorrah (American Revelation XIII, Two.)

Joe: For the last time, I'm pretty sure what's killing the crops is this Brawndo stuff.
Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.
Attorney General: "So wait a minute. What you're saying is that you want us to put water on the crops.
Joe: Yes.
Attorney General: Water. Like out the toilet?
Joe: Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be out of the toilet, but, yeah, that's the idea.
Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave.
Attorney General: It's got electrolytes.
Joe: Okay, look. The plants aren't growing, so I'm pretty sure that the Brawndo's not working. Now, I'm no botanist, but I do know that if you put water on plants, they grow.
Secretary of Energy: Well, I've never seen no plants grow out of no toilet.
Secretary of State: Hey, that's good. You sure you ain't the smartest guy in the world?
Joe: Okay, look. You want to solve this problem. I want to get my pardon. So why don't we just try it, okay, and not worry about what plants crave?
Attorney General: Brawndo's got what plants crave.
Secretary of Energy: Yeah, it's got electrolytes.
Joe: What are electrolytes? Do you even know?
Secretary of State: It's what they use to make Brawndo.
~From the film Idiocracy.

I've been seeing this shit going around all day.

Evidently, while he was in the White House, Trump made lewd comments about his daughter, Ivanka, to the people around him, talking about her breasts and his sexual fantasies and shit. Predictably, the MAGA's swarmed to defend their "God."

Back in the day I was a fan of the Howard Stern show. I picked up the habit in 1991. I had friends who were fans, I watched all the episodes of the TV version...either new on HBO (I think?) or as reruns there and elsewhere. I had Sirius XM for awhile when that was new, and caught it there also. 

Motherfucker had Donald Trump on his show often enough to be annoying, and I remember a fair number of his seamy comments about Ivanka from there. 

Being a Christian moderate-conservative Republican for most of that time I mostly chalked such things up to the perversion of rich nominally-Leftist city folks, was disgusted, and got on with my day. I never thought Trump would be President, I sure as shit never thought he'd be President as a Republican!

Hell, I remember watching Trump on WWE in the Aughts, when we all figured he'd hit bottom and wasn't ever gonna get back up again.

But ya know, there was a perverse dude-bro fascination with the man (often held by perverse dude-bros) or at least it was that way for some of the people around me. He'd basically put his face or his name to goddamn near anything, there was something shamelessly entrepreneurial, yet also pathetic, about it.

Which seemed about par for the course, for a guy who'd openly speak about fucking his daughter in public, nobody with any class or a brain in their head wanted to give that fucker money.

I wonder if this bullshit is why the Republicans are having so many people get arrested for pedophilia and sexual abuse. They think because Trump talks like that, they can do it??

Perversely enough, though, that's not even the most evil or fucked up or wrong thing I saw today, as I also saw Russian Nationalist freak Alexander Dugin calling for even more atrocities against Ukraine. Since Wagner's abortive coup attempt last week, there seems to be a real fear that the Russians are going to do something stupid to try and show "Strength."

Somebody pointed out that Russia, at this point, is basically an apathetic Idiocracy that lives inside of a TV and the Enchanted World spun up by people like Margarita Simonyan and Olga Skabeeva.

And my mind flashed back to watching a couple of my coworkers back when I worked at the casino, literally staring wide-eyed zombie-like at whichever of the goddamn breakroom TV's had Fox News on it.

And these people, who covet the same kind of Idiocracy as is run by a literal KGB agent have the balls to call other people "Communists?" 

Really, dude? Just a goddamn minute. I only last night wrote about Republicans openly touting Hitler, Stalin and Mao as the "Direction they want to take America in."

(Seriously, are these fucking people just not hearing themselves??)

But I'm going to guess (Putinist Neo-or otherwise) Commies are just fine with Rick Scott, so long as they're "Republicans?"

I guess I never thought I'd live to see the day where Commies, open traitors and perverts would dominate the Republican Party...and the average "Republican" voter would be just fine with it all.

Honestly I think MAGA is just so full of hate and rage that anything anybody says is irrelevant.

"Reagan Wept" doesn't even begin to cover it.

If the Republican Party keeps going like this, it's going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah because the arrogant, perverted Idiocracy in their own ranks is worse, this shit is some straight up Biblical-level evil.

Welcome to American Revelation.

One

Слава Україна!

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

...

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields




Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Last Stand (American Revelation XIII, One.)

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields

...

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us; they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them. 

~Hunter S. Thompson

...

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. ~Ronald Reagan

So apparently, Republicans are just coming right out now and saying that Hitler, Mao and Stalin "Are the direction they want to take this country in.

Thus saith the Party of "Freedom?"

Freedom for whom, and freedom to do what??

'Cause I'm going to be honest. I used to be a Republican and I didn't know "Freedom to go to hell and be with motherfuckers like Hitler, Mao and Stalin" was ever on the ticket.

Reagan Wept, among other people.

Apparently Trump tried to say last weekend that he's for "religion" and Biden...who is a practicing Catholic...isn't.

Trump is basically an Atheist, he's ignorant of the Word and seems to believe in no thing more than he believes in himself. But, because he tells the Evangelicals how great they are and hates the same people that they do, they think he's Jesus.

Just sayin' Christians, if you want to go to hell right alongside guys like Hitler, Mao, and Stalin...keep accepting Trump as your "Lord and Savior." That's not a joke...stuff like that is, well, standard Christian belief from 20-25 years ago. 

Worshiping Man and not God is one sure way to go to Hell.

Read the Bible, motherfuckers.

On a trip up here from downstate in 2004, I ran into the Pastor of my old church at the grocery store in town before heading out to my mom's. I mentioned to him that there was such a religion as "Celebrity Worship" per an encyclopedia of World Religions that I was then reading...

I thought he was going to go full Fire And Brimstone in the middle of the grocery store, and that is not a joke.

Being a Republican these days apparently consists of two things;

#1 Being a bitter, revenge-obsessed patriarchal religious asshole while worshipping Donald Trump as if Trump were some kind of God walking around on the Earth or something.

#2 Wanting to kill anyone who Doesn't, or who Isn't From Here, or who doesn't buy into MAGA's Manifest-Destiny-On-Meth version of the Prosperity Gospel. 

It's a Christless Calvinism, like the dour Afrikaner religious fanatics that founded the Boer Republics and later turned already-racist South Africa into an Apartheid state...or the English speaking version just over the border in Rhodesia going on two decades after that...but much more feebleminded and without any of the rationalizations that made those places what they theoretically were.

See, the people who did that shit claimed they were the last outpost of Christianity and defending "Western Values" too. 

And in so doing they basically made the Communists look like the fucking good guys. And Congress had to override Reagan's veto of sanctions on South Africa in the 1980's. Think about that, for a second.

But how does that work when the only thing these fucking people are interested in defending is not God or even leftover British Colonialism but...Donald Trump??

Unless you really want us to believe that consumerism, greed and petty hatreds really are the sum total of Christianity and "Western Values" I'd proceed carefully from this moment forward, "Conservatives."

Republicans proceed to assure me, complete with a big show, a bunch of bright lights, and total lack of self-awareness...that this is exactly what they believe the sum total of Western Values to be. The Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia...but with a church and a Mall complete with some underage worker behind the counter selling 100% Certified Not-Gay pictures of Donald Trump's head photoshopped onto some muscle-y beefcake dude's body.

I don't like this sequel to Idiocracy.

And I, having been a Christian and a Republican, am confused as to how we even got here. It makes no sense according to...these fucking people's stated values

If you take anything at face value, there's no valid reason for this bullshit.

(Which is exactly why I think it was all bullshit.)

You tell me, "Conservatives." How did we get here? You can't even tell me that, can you?

At least not without admitting that it was all a lie. The Left didn't convince me of this, YOU did.

Let alone how these assholes ended up worshiping a man who was the literal antithesis of everything they ever claimed to believe before...and for no better reason than he was White-trash-fancy, willing to talk up a bunch of racist crap and tolerant of their LGBT-phobia. 

It makes no sense.

Unless, that is, all this other stuff was a complete and total lie the entire time.

And now, these fucking people's basic attitude towards a bunch of the rest of us is "How dare they be alive and happy and doing things that are perfectly legal between consenting adults in the places where they are being done."

It's like they think the rest of the world is somehow bound to follow the dour religiosity they themselves ignore.

Conservatism these days seems to consist of *Checks Notes* building bombastic ostensibly Christian cathedrals to honor the Red Army and the atheistic Soviet Union. I can't make that shit make sense.

And it's this hypocrisy that killed the entire "Conservative" thing for me. Political or social conservatism, or religion, was 100% able to be discarded until it had to be re-adopted purely as a shield of lies for bad behavior

There literally is no extant form of conservatism that isn't dependent on hatred towards some "Other" (if not all "Others" at this point) purely to hold it together.

Being merely politically or socially conservative, or religious, at this point...while professing either a belief in (small-L, small-D) liberal democracy, or a rejection of Fascism, or both...basically makes one a Democrat.

And then, these fucking people...whether it's American Republicans or Russian Orcs...have the balls to get mad when other people resist destruction or domination at their hands.

Winston Churchill once famously said that if Hitler invaded Hell, he'd at least speak up in favor of the Devil in the House Of Commons.

This is pretty much the right attitude to have with this shit. These fucking people don't even care if their own beliefs make sense. They just want to hate and kill and they'll make up anything that lets them do that.

It's basically, as I've said before, the "Gospel Of Whatever Lets Me Sleep Through The Night."

And that's not only all these fucking clowns have left...it's all they even want.

As near as I can tell, expressed belief...while engaging in completely contradictory behaviors, is itself being seen as an expression of Power.

But it's power these fucking people don't really have anymore, and can only grant among themselves.

So what do they do?? Convince themselves that everybody else is "really" just like them, and then certain in their claimed knowledge that everyone and everything is really shit, they try to colonize their fellow Americans.

I suppose it works right up until the Natives come up to your wounded ass, kill you and then mutilate your ass after badly savaging your cavalry regiment.

I suppose it works right up until the sea comes crashing in through the window.

They're going to rationalize themselves right into destruction...but they'll probably take whole nations down with them, unless the rest of us stand up and stop this shit.

Don't be these fucking people.

Honor the shark that ate the Russian man. Let other people be themselves, same as you'd expect to be left alone. Mock Donald Trump. Reject any religion that tolerates this bullshit. Support people who are fighting for their own right to exist.

It's not really even that hard.

Can you tell me, Conservatives, why it's so hard for you to be against Colonialism in a country that bases its entire damned existence off having rejected being a colony??

If this was the Last Stand on Earth, as Reagan said...the last stand of what?

What do we, as a people, collectively desire to be Free to do??

If we can't answer that, and do it honestly...and then rectify any faults...then America is fully deserving of the torments of Revelation.

Welcome to American Revelation, again.

Слава Україна!

Last Post

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan













Monday, June 26, 2023

Ancient Lands (Pearls Before Swine, Five.)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door! ~Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus.

...

'When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”
~Leviticus 19:33-34, New International Version.

I saw this while I was at work.

Apparently Dollar Store Goebbels wanted the military to attack migrant boats with drones and Hellfires. This motherfucker is Jewish. I don't give good goddamn if he's "Conservative." The words "War Crime" ought to fucking well register here.

In my life, I've met actual White Supremacists, actual murderous goddamned assholes who are generally in and out of prisons for doing, ya know, crimes. I've written about this.

I've also met the cosplay political "Own The Libs" type...you know, like Dollar Store Goebbels and Richard Spencer...and seen them get administratively separated from the Air Force while still in Boot Camp because they kept calling Black people the N-Word even after the TI specifically ordered them to stop and they'd already faced non-judicial punishment and been written up and warned in writing that such behavior was against regulations.

(These are lessons the military learned the hard way, in blood, by the way. At least some of the people who are like this...if they're like that in the military they have the sense to keep their mouths shut. Far more common as far as I can tell, are those who go full nutty after they get out.)

You know what the criminal White Supremacist sees the Pepe Brigade types as good for? Things like prison sex-slavery, if they're lucky. Unless they're, ya know, Jewish or otherwise not-white or not the "right" kind of "White" in which case the real White Supremacists only want to kill them.

The people Stephen Miller is trying so hard to be like would shoot him in the back of his Cue-Ball head and think not a damn thing of it. But you can't tell that to these fucking people.

Genocide of non-Whites means you, too, Chrome Dome.

It's also specifically worth noting that Miller says he was radicalized by NRA propaganda.

So yes, think about that for a second.

And speaking as a United States Air Force veteran here...as somebody who did tours in other countries including peacekeeping in Bosnia...I'm beyond appalled and outraged that somebody would even propose this kind of bullshit. Using military force against people who are only trying to seek a better life for themselves, or who are refugees from war, or whatever...is a crime.

I've seen what happens when people decide that some other group of people doesn't have the right to exist. Hell, the whole world is getting a refresher course with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This is America. We The People means all of us. We are a goddamned Nation of immigrants. Hell, Stephen Miller's ancestors fled from the Russian Empire! Yet he'd rather turn America into the very 'Ancient Lands' his own ancestors fled from! Make it make sense!

I served in the 410th Security Police Squadron with people who were of many ethnicities or races, specifically a bunch of my squad-mates and my closest friends in Security Forces were Black. My LT was a Jewish woman! My best friend was was a convert to Islam, and we were close because he was also from Michigan. One, owing to his birth in some English-speaking Caribbean country, wasn't an American citizen yet. Another...had gotten expedited American citizenship because he was Afro-Cuban. 

My one close white friend was Italian by heritage, and America gave his family a home after WWII. His grandparents often still spoke Italian at home!

We didn't swear our oaths based on race or politics. We swore our oaths to the Constitution. A hell of a lot of us didn't agree with a lot of the shit that was going on in America at the time. A lot of us were very much small-c conservative in a nation that'd grown more liberal. We didn't have to like it. That wasn't the point.

We were there because we believed in America, in spite of all its faults!

While I'm at it...we hated the Militia nuts more than just about anybody did. We regarded them as criminals...because that's very often exactly what they were. I was on duty the day Timothy McVeigh blew up the Federal building in Oklahoma City.

Because respect is earned, by every action, every day. Thinking you're bad because you've got a gun does not make you a soldier. And people who are like this? They don't want to be, because they might have to learn a thing or two. 

Professing a belief in Jesus and various far-right conspiracy theories don't make you righteous.

Because we're either all Americans or none of us really are.

Because either you believe in America...all of it...or you don't.

We ain't your goddamn "Race Warriors." Fuck You.

And personally I'll take people who scrambled aboard overloaded planes, or who sailed across seas or walked across deserts to get here who are willing to do the work to make this shit better, over braindead entitled rich kids who think they shit don't stink because they read some book in high school and decided to become a "Conservative" all damn day, every day.

I don't give a damn what you believe, you don't have the right to remake our country in your own perverted image.

You either stand against the fall of night or you don't. It really is that simple.

Слава Україна!

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. ~Matthew 7:6

Four

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






Saturday, June 24, 2023

Psyop (Pearls Before Swine, Four.)

Well long, tall Sally

She's built for speed, she got
Everything that Uncle John need, oh, baby
Yeah, baby, woo, baby
Havin' me some fun tonight, yeah
Well, I saw Uncle John with bald-head Sally
He saw Aunt Mary comin' and he ducked back in the alley, oh, baby
Yes, baby, woo, baby
Havin' me some fun tonight, yeah, ow
Well, long, tall Sally
She's built for speed, she got
Everything that Uncle John need, oh, baby
Yes, baby, woo, baby
Havin' me some fun tonight, yeah
Well, I saw Uncle John with bald-head Sally
He saw Aunt Mary comin' and he ducked back in the alley, oh, baby
Yes, baby, woo, baby
Havin' me some fun tonight, yeah. 
~Long Tall Sally, Little Richard
...
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. ~Matthew 7:6

So, it's afternoon here, and the Wagnerites continue their advance towards Moscow.

Still not that much in the way of resistance by the Russian Army.

I'm going to guess the Russian Army was never all that.

To me, this feels very much like watching the fall of Kabul in 2021. Hell, as I understand it, flights out of Moscow are full up, so it's got to be feeling that way to a lot of Russians, too.

Hell, Putin has apparently fled Moscow.

And ya know, I realized something a little bit ago.

I haven't seen Trump, or any of the usual "Conservatives" comment on this yet. I know last night CNN and Fox News were studiously ignoring this mess.

I have to wonder now, across the "Conservative" spectrum, in the Republican Party and on the Tankie far-left...just how many people's careers are going to flame out if Putin goes down?

Because apparently a lot of these fucking people are freaking out, including some I wouldn't quite have expected.

A bunch of the usual alt-right Nazis are acting like scared little boys right now.

Others appear to be acting out more...strangely. 

Like seriously who the fuck even talks about Rhodesia anymore?

I've often said "Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989.

Welp, Rhodesia hasn't been a thing since 1979 and it ended far less dramatically, by reverting to UK colony status while the factions therein hashed out some kind of workable system under British and Commonwealth supervision including that of armed forces.

More to the point while there's a number of post-Soviet governments that are famously Soviet-nostalgic including those of Belarus, Russia itself and Transnistria, nobody's nostalgic for Rhodesia except a few American white supremacists. 

I mean, shit, the main Rhodesian war memorial is basically abandoned in a field at an English country estate. And nobody gives a shit

Seems to be an upgrade, less recent photos showed the statue half hidden in some bushes.

I'd like to be able to say I think Putin's legacy is going to end up the same way, forgotten rather like Mikhail Gorbachev. But it's more likely the epic of Vladimir The Great ends in gruesome death or a shameful exile.

It's almost like this could possibly end with Putin...living somewhere on the grounds at Mar-a-Lago?

And it of course, then becomes a Republican Purity Test that they will protect him.

If they can ever get past the confusion or the denial.

I keep seeing comments to the effect of "It's a PSYOP, bro!"

Look, if the CIA, our government or Joe Biden was that goddamn powerful, none of these assorted messes would even exist.

I'm fucking sick of these fucking people trying to turn every goddamn thing into a conspiracy theory.

Be nice to see the looks on their faces when Andy Ngo, Ian Miles Cheong, Jack Posobiec and all these other motherfuckers have to go get real jobs, though.

(And I wonder how many of the rest of these Little Dick Nazis are paid by Russia?)

I hear Walmart is hiring. Fuck You.

Nothing but lifelong shame and boring ass menial bullshit jobs forever should be the wages of selling out America or whatever one's country is otherwise to Putin's Russia. A younger me would've suggested death...but I think embarrassment and having to live through every shitty goddamn second of it and be known for treason would maybe be  worse a better punishment.

See, when I got too big for my Mom to whup my ass anymore, that's when she got all psychological and used things like embarrassment, frustration and shame instead. It probably worked better, truth be told.

When their Big Daddy Vlad goes away, we need to make these people live in their shit, make them face what they done, those who will not feel shame can be taught it.

How's that for a...PSYOP, motherfuckers??

Three

Слава Україна!

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan







Friday, June 23, 2023

Nero's Submarine (Pearls Before Swine, Three.)

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. ~Ronald Reagan

So, again, this is going on.

Apparently Russian army formations are rallying to Prigozhin's banner and his forces have taken the southern city of Rostov-On-Don without a fight.

Indeed, while they were attacked by helicopter gunships at some point earlier, they appear to have shot them down and continued on. Once inside the city they appear to have encountered nothing more in their way than bemused locals with smart phones.

(Here we have Wagner mercs storming the Headquarters of the Southern Military District. Again, facing no opposition, filmed by locals and tourists.)

In a word...Shit.

Maybe it's just me. I hate Putin, but I don't like the idea of these goons winning either, and it honestly looks like they're winning.

Or rather, like a whole hell of a lot of Russians are just not fighting, indeed they seem to be throwing in with the Wagnerites right out the gate.

And it genuinely doesn't look like there's serious opposition forming up anywhere between Rostov and Moscow...at least not yet.

I'm a veteran. 

Mercenaries disgust me on general principle.

I can't even imagine looking at these guys and just being like "Yeah, Okay, whatever you think."

But I suppose the key point here is I'm not Russian...and here we are.

And Russians, so far, appear to be accepting all this with a shrug, there's no panic.

I can't even imagine something like this going on...and where's Putin??

You'd think he'd be doing...something?

Like, goddamn, Russia is folding even faster than Afghanistan did in 2021...and Russia is probably falling to even worse people.

At least the Taliban were allegedly fighting for God.

And I watched that whole mess unfold live on here in August of 2021.

The situation in Afghanistan literally fell apart faster than the international community could react to, the Afghan National Army stopped fighting the Taliban once things got past a certain point, then started joining them. And so it looks that way again, only things went to shit even faster.

And what do these Wagner fucks stand for??

As I understand it, the Wagnerites are basically Nazis.

Nazis that the Russians just handed out all type of heavy weapons and shit to.

Like, really?

You'd think you wouldn't need a goddamn KGB agent to see how that could be a problem.

Meanwhile, while we're all watching this mess on social media...what's the US news media doing?

Oh.

Never mind.

We're still on the Titanic Sub thing.

Are you fucking serious??

At this point, ignorance is a goddamned choice.

There's not much more, representative of the whole right-wing mentality than some idiot CEO saying "Safety regulations hurt innovation" and then he's on his goddamned Home Depot Submarine when the shit sinks. Of course the media has been all over that shit for the last five days, even as the recent sinking of a migrant-smuggling vessel off the coast of Greece was still big news in Europe...our media swept that shit under the rug and focused on five idiots in a tin can who anybody with knowledge of the subject said were likely already dead of their own hubris...a grim assessment that unfortunately turned out to be correct.

And the media's still talking about it.

Hell, Republicans are trying to make a scandal out of it because the Navy might've detected the sub's implosion (As if they'd have had any way of knowing what it was without analysis and knowing what was going on at the time.) Because something something distraction from their made-up Hunter Biden scandal mania Gazpacho.

Jesus Christ, people. Grow the fuck up!

Quite possibly the most important geopolitical events since 1989 are ongoing and US media wants to talk about the last big story.

Come on, people, try and keep up.

This shit brings to mind the old bit about Nero playing some kind of musical instrument while Rome burned. CNN be talking about some stupid submarine that was literally yesterday's news when Moscow's burning and Rostov has literally been conquered by mercenaries??

Has a problem like that even existed in like 300 years?? 

Jesus, what's wrong with people?

What happens when the barbarians are at our gates?

If you want a better nation, you have to be a better citizen, and this ain't it.

Two 

Слава Україна!

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. ~Matthew 7:6

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



All In The Valley Of Death (Pearls Before Swine, Two.)

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade.

...

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields

Apparently, since I wrote my last post, there's a very good chance that Russia could be falling into civil war...in just the last few hours, goddamn.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade

Okay, so basically, the worst people in the world, in the worst country in the world, are fighting?

Can't really say that's a good thing. Possible civil war in a nuclear-armed country seems like a really bad idea. Remember, their nukes are pointed at us. If some maniac like the fucking Wagner guy ends up in charge, that's going to be bad.

I mean, I can't really complain if Putin goes down. I hate that motherfucker.

But at the same time it's very likely that anybody who replaces him could be even worse, in fact, would probably have to be, just to restore "Order."

Think the Empire from Star Wars.

That's one thing Reagan did right, calling Russia the "Evil Empire."

Deterrence, "Peace Through Strength" was a solid strategy for dealing with that shit.

Here's the thing, though:

And this is important:

If somebody other than Putin takes over, and then turns out to be a worse son of a bitch than he was, but makes a few people's lives a little better and/or (especially) scares the bejesus out of the West, there's a hell of a lot of Russians who'll love him for it.

There's a decent number of Russians yet who continue to revere Josef Stalin, and Putin basically reactivated Old Joe's personality cult. Think about that for a second, these are not decent or nice people. 

Stalin killed close to as many people as Hitler did and they still love the son of a bitch!

The Russians had a boatload of chances to choose democracy, to do better, to be free. They simply didn't. I get that Russia was a soup sandwich in the 1990's. I was deployed to Latvia when I was in the Air Force. I talked to plenty of Russians who, one way or another, ended up supporting UN, US and NATO forces in places like Bosnia, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

Some of them wanted to be free. A hell of a lot of them missed the Soviet Union.

Flashed all their sabers bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabering the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
 ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade

Official corruption in the Russian government, organized crime on a massive scale, the usual Chicago Boys type "Libertarian" American "Business" people, and Evangelical Christians flooded the zone with shit and...well, I'd like to say they made this mess, but the truth is all they really did was kept the same old mess going and prevented something better (or at least different) from turning up. Putin's rise and his replacing Boris Yeltsin was not even seriously contested.

And maybe it's just me, but I rather suspect this is going to be more of the same, and shit appears to be spiraling out of control.

There's fire in the sky near Moscow.

Like, goddamn.

That's messed up, like somebody blew up the whole POL farm or some shit.

The thing to remember here is that a lot of the people in power in this situation are the people who were the fucking bad guys during the fall of the goddamned Soviet Union.

These are the dudes trying to get Prigozhin and Wagner to stand down.

And I can't imagine that any of those motherfuckers really want to see Putin's re-Sovietization of Russia go down the tubes either. 

If the Russian Army...even in its war-attritted, reduced-at-home state, fights, Wagner is fucked. They simply don't have the manpower to take on a national army on that scale...that said the main question is if the Russian loyalist forces can get that army in the way of the Wagnerites or not.

 That is, in fact, probably the question.

And my gut and what I know of Russian logistics and transport says that answer is probably "No."

More to the point any rapid response forces like airborne troops that might meet this threat head on already have fallen victim to Saint Javelin and Sultan Bayraktar and have apparently not been replaced. 

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. ~Ronald Reagan

So it'll come down most likely to whatever's directly in the way, and whatever's garrisoned in Moscow. That's probably bad.

And if you're thinking we can count on any kind of rational response to this mess from our own "Republicans" you have another thing coming.

Everything is a goddamn conspiracy, apparently including this

Motherfucker, no, not everything is about you and whatever stupid political bullshit you think you have going on.

People who try and make their opposition seem like some kind of all-powerful gods...and every damn thing about themselves...are just trying to find ways to rationalize whatever fucked up shit they want to do.

Joe Biden didn't have anything to do with this, nor did the CIA.

This is...Russians being Russians.

It's like when the white tiger locked its jaws on the guy's head and effectively ended that famous Las Vegas show. Sometimes people are just not better than this, mate.

And remember, this shit is what Republicans think they want to be.

Don't buy anything these motherfuckers are selling.

Just my thoughts on the current crisis, and I'd strongly suggest one hell of a lot of us need to pull our heads out of our asses if we're going to deal with this shit properly.

We're in for some chop.

One

Слава Україна!

Last Post

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

...

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. ~Matthew 7:6