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