Vaporware Heroes (American Revelation XIII, Seven.)

There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die. Who knows? If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix — a clean well lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except those who know in their hearts what is missing... And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Generation Of Swine.

...

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I saw this while I was at work.

Some "Trump" flag display with the Marine Corps and POW/MIA flags.

Found it via Stonekettle, so I'm guessing this is from Florida.

Help me out here.

In the past, we generally as a people have revered people who had actual heroic appearance or qualities, if not always decent character. I mean, sure, once in awhile you'd get somebody who was just all-around terrible at whatever they did, but they were good at public relations or something, and/or they embodied a certain ethic or quality that resonated with people.

General Douglas MacArthur springs to mind, or John Wayne. They sucked, but they had limits, too.

Trump doesn't act or look the part, manages to do none of this, publicly shows only bad qualities (if he bothers to show any qualities at all!) and the only thing he even shares with a vast majority of today's "Conservatives" is raving bigotry and conspiratorial thinking, combined with a vacuous lack of intellect.

Trump is the end product of the old American TV Pop-Culture that most people stopped paying much attention to over 20 years ago, because it got stupid.

And he'd even make a shitty dictator because there's no "There" there. Actual dictatorship or fascism requires a degree of personal courage (or at least the appearance of it, See Also: Hussein, Saddam) and a certain degree of real (rather than fake-conspiracy theory-based) if nothing else because there's soon going to be a queue of people behind you with knives or whatever other weapons they find handy.

Trump has none of this, and speaks in a droning monotone that sounds like Chloroform, Enunciated.

Unless he's insulting somebody else or talking about himself, that's about the only time Trump don't talk like a rambling old grandpa-man (at best) or like a dementia patient (at worst.)

And that's just what we see in public. We keep finding out that the actual reality is worse. Like the whole bit about all the incestuous fantasies and talk about Ivanka...and "Conservatives" tried to say this was normal?

So what do these fucking MAGA's do?!

They basically just...make a person up?

I've seen Trump drawn or painted as an Astronaut, a boxer, a fighter pilot, a superhero, or various kinds of guru or Christ-like figure. I've seen more images of Trump's head photoshopped onto Sly Stallone's body and wielding improbable weapons than I can count. 

Now somebody trying to make him look like George Washington or some shit. Why??

What's even the damned point? 

Anybody who's been paying attention knows Trump ain't that guy.

Motherfucker don't just look like...but acts like...he ain't never even taken a punch (or had to dish one out against somebody who wasn't being held down by a couple other guys) in his whole damn life.

I've beaten people up, I've been beat up. I've been in armed standoffs with people, and other tense spots. I've been shot at, or thought I was...and when the voice on the radio still says "Weapons Tight" that's when you really have to find a way to keep your cool. It takes more to get to me than it takes to get to Trump. And I know me, so that's scary as fuck.

As Hillary Clinton said, the President should not be somebody you can bait with a Tweet.

Of course these same fucking people seem to think a little teenage murderer like Kyle Rittenhouse is some kind of a hero. 

I swear, do these assholes sit around in focus groups and shit all the time, actively trying to figure out how they can be even more shitty, worse people??

The Bible talks about there being one Abomination Of Desolation, one Antichrist, one Beast Of Revelations, one False Prophet. It doesn't even close to say what to do if there's 70 million of the motherfuckers...and they are literally all trying to turn Cracker-Barrel Caligula into some kind of god.

And from Elon Musk buying Twitter to the idiot down the street with the '79 Ford pickup and the house bedecked with a dozen or so large Trump flags...they've spent untold and untellable amounts of money doing it.

Never understanding, not even once, that while freedom isn't free...money is not what you pay that cost in.

And I saw "Civil War" trending earlier.

Like I said yesterday, these fucking people don't have the slightest idea what a Civil War even is.

At least Robert E. Lee had the respect of his troops, and they knew and could say why they followed that bitter, wretched old man.

Those men had no time for Vaporware Heroes.

They'd never have even got as far as they did with that shit.

Today's MAGA's "fight" for bigotry, for domination and exploitation of others, for a "Look at me" religiosity and a scam-based "Conservatism" that people like Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley, shitty as they were, would neither recognize nor be welcome in. And the MAGA's do this, without so much as having the guts to understand internally that that's what their cause even is.

More to the point, when the entire world is given an example of just exactly what courage and strength really is, these fools try and claim conspiracies and deny and minimize and when all else fails, they'll just make shit up.

And then they wonder why they fail, why they can only win with a stacked deck, and why the public is sick of them and tired of their cheating. For fuck's sake even MAGA don't like Republicans.

Lindsay Graham got booed at that Trump rally last weekend. The Toady from Mad Max, straight up. He got booed and you can bet he'll get up there again and take it even more, because what else is there??

I used to be a Republican.

If I'd known that Republicans would be the fucking people who, when shown "Hey, this is Hell" (and hell looked like the Redneck Riviera of the Florida Panhandle) that they would say "Sign Me Up!!" I probably would not have ever been one.

I listened with tears in my eyes when Reagan gave that "Tear Down This Wall" speech in Berlin.

When George H.W. Bush spoke about the need to go to war to liberate Kuwait, I watched, quietly understanding at that point, that such things were a big deal.

A uniformed me, then a tough young Security Policeman, cheered when Martha McSally stood up for women in the military and said they were every bit as capable as any man.

On 9/11 when George W. Bush gave his speech amid the wreckage of the World Trade Center and said "We hear you" and later said this war was not about Islam, but about fighting the terrorists who perverted it, I very well understood what was at stake, and that a couple friends of mine then still serving were going to be in harm's way. One of those brothers of mine was a Muslim.

The fuck happened to all that, to all those people...or to those who should have picked up the legacy they left and ran with it??

Was it just easier to just make up Trump, or to hate America while still whacking off all over its symbolism??

What the fuck even are we?!?!

Literally everything I was ever taught says America and its people are supposed to be exceptional, to be different from the rest of the world, that we as a nation are unique because we are about becoming, rather than simply being. 

I have ancestors who came here because here was the only place they could make something of themselves because all they had was the capability to do hard labor, and they knew it. America was the only place they could go where bettering themselves was even an option at the time.

Do we not then owe that same option to other people?

How the fuck did so many of us become a bunch of miserable bastards who'd rather sink back into the night from which we arose and live under churchmen and incestuous nobles and kings than face the challenges of the next goddamn day in any environment where they must hear the voices of others??

Yesterday was Independence Day. Today, as is every day, is American Revelation.

If we want to keep the former and cease to face the latter, we have to have a civilization.

We have to meet the challenges of now, not wish for the way things were 160 years ago. I've tried to tell these people, if they're so unhappy, only they have the power to make their lives better. Most of them didn't even understand me.

We have to face what really is, and then do something about it.

And right now that means not being a Republican. We don't have time to fuck around with Vaporware heroes, either.

Six

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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