What Communion Hath Light With Darkness? (Pride Month, Nine.)

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

...

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. ~Elie Wiesel

I saw this earlier. Local TV station down by Grand Rapids got they ass in trouble with the corporation that owns them for taking a "Both Sides" approach RE: LGBT issues and Pride Month.

Now, this was one of our channels when I lived in Mt. Pleasant, if we're being honest, I can't say I'm surprised. We also got most of the TV channels from Saginaw and even a few from up here. Media tends to reflect where it's located, and I find it interesting that where I live now generally has less overlap with Trump Land than where I used to live. Mt. Pleasant was a supposedly more "liberal" college town, home to a major state university. But you go five, ten miles in any direction...especially around the edges of the Isabella Indian Reservation where people seemed to enjoy giving their neighbors the middle finger...and you start seeing Trump signs.

And in 2016 we had more than our share of Third Party voters in a state that had more than its share of Third Party voters, although by 2020 that'd tapered off quite a bit, because by then most people had gotten sick of Trump.

Michigan, like the rest of America and the world, is changing.

And I feel like Republicans are accelerating social change by stupidly trying to suppress it. They think it's beneath them to explain why a thing should be. They'd rather just rule by fiat and tell others what to do. 

Having been a Republican when Republicans had different values and less of a "Me First" attitude, I don't know how they, of all people, forgot that Americans (other than current members of The Party and the Trump Cultists) mostly don't roll that way. Unless they're as ignorant of their own history as they are of everyone else's.

In fact, the MAGA's don't go that way either...just go right ahead and tell them to do something they don't "Want" to do.

I'm tired of These Fucking People and their endless LGBT-phobic, racist and reactionary bullshit.

Hate is not a goddamned value.

Stop acting like it is, or treating this shit like it should have some kind of credibility, because it fucking doesn't.

I'm tired of it.

I'm even more tired of the endless masturbatory, self-congratulatory, self-justifying conspiracy theory bullshit, and so on.

It's like these fucking people don't want to live in reality, so they just make up their own and because it's Republicans, and not some dumb five year old kid making up their own words and talking to the trees and not wiping their, everyone just pretends this bullshit is somehow acceptable.

And, in the end, I think it almost makes it worse that they do all this shit for...Donald Fucking Trump, of all goddamn people? Why? What's even the goddamn point?!?!

You fuckers believe in this shit so hard, explain it to me.

Except you can't. 

Or you won't because you don't have the guts to say it to somebody who you know will tell you to go fuck yourself, because that shit is wrong.

And they know it, they just hope we don't. Or they hope they can fool us.

And all these media "Both Sides" narratives make them think they can.

After all the media's "Liberal" isn't it? 

(LOL. If anything the media is hooked on Trump like crack addicts.)

I've literally never met a goddamned MAGA who could or would tell me WHY they love Trump so much. 

The best answers I've ever been able to get are "I don't know" or "I like the shit he says" and this from supposedly grown-ass men.

By contrast nearly every LGBT person or Person Of Color or non-Christian person (and many non-white or non-Evangelical Christians, also) and most people of most political persuasions can at least tell me a little about why they believe what they do or how they feel about what they are.

And people are getting tired of the bullshit.

Republicans and all these hard-right Authoritarian idiots around the world know it, that's why they'd rather plot mass-murder than even Estado Novo-type fascistic governance in any kind of steady fashion.

They know if they ever do get to do what they want, their time will be very short, indeed. 

Or they know that the best they'll get is...Russia...and the kind of governance and wars that Russia has, and that against even a second-rate power supported by democratic, first-world nations their dreams of some vast, fascistic yet somehow also stateless-yet ruled by some Strongman-global empire will meet the same bloody end as the Russian Army.

The whole thing would meet a bloody, gruesome end, and very quickly, simply because there's too many contradictory beliefs and other things in play, here.

And the reason for that is, this is for the most part a "Philosophy" of buzzwords and Magic Words and Phrases, connived and contrived by idiots who think they want to live in a childlike Enchanted world, who think all the nightmares will get dumped off on other people. "Conservatives" demand their "Innocence" be purchased "restored" with the blood of others. 

America isn't America if everybody gets a piece, Heaven isn't Heaven if everybody gets to go. The world community isn't what it is unless somebody has to live in fear of attack by rapacious neighbors.

(And for some reason these motherfuckers never think that'll be them.)

For the most part, that's what These Fucking People are so angry about...that others aren't lining up to sacrifice themselves so "Conservatives" can be "happy" for five minutes. And people want to "Both Sides" this??

They don't know...and/or they don't care...that Civilization requires taking a stand, and requires work now and again in order to maintain, much less improve.

You can't make everybody happy, there is all too often objectively a right and a wrong.

And they've become militantly against the idea that "We The People" means all of us.

How so many people don't understand that this is wrong, I'll never understand.

I'm afraid to ask how the next crisis where everybody has to pitch in will go, when it comes to the "Conservatives." Motherfuckers already basically want America to surrender to Russia and we ain't even been attacked yet.

There's no "Two Sides" to that. 

These fucking people would rather be Slaves of the Caesars and live under a tyranny their own damned selves than see "Other" people be free. At this point for "Conservatives" it's literally anything other than "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."

Meanwhile, most of the rest of us just want to live our lives and do what we gotta do without these assholes bothering us with their bullshit.

This is America, make up your mind and pick a goddamned side. This really isn't that hard.

If you don't, you're making common cause with the bad guys anyway.

And no, they're not going to give you anything for it. The dark world they'd love to create would eat you too, same as everybody else.

You want a better nation, you have to be a better citizen. Pick a side.

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Eight

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ~2nd Corinthians 14:16

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. 

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.