Losing Yourself (War Dance, Six.)

Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted-One moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti
He's nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready to drop bombs, but he keeps on forgetting
What he wrote down, the whole crowd goes so loud
He opens his mouth, but the words won't come out
He's chokin now, everybody's jokin now
The clock's run out, time's up over, blouww!
Snap back to reality, Oh there goes gravity
Oh, there goes Rabbit, he choked
He's so mad, but he won't give up that
Easy? No
He won't have it , he knows his whole back to these ropes
It don't matter, he's dope
He knows that, but he's broke
He's so stacked that he knows
When he goes back to his mobile home, that's when it's
Back to the lab again yo this whole rhapsody
He better go capture this moment and hope it don't pass him.

You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo.

~Eminem, Lose Yourself.

I was hoping to avoid having to comment on the ravening shit-show that was the GOP debate last night. But, in surveying the wreckage...I'm like, wow, what the fuck happened??

This ain't your Dad's Republican Party. Hell, this ain't even what's left of the 2016 Republican Party.

I'd be embarrassed to be one of these people now.

I used to be a Republican, I'm a veteran. I volunteered for Bush's campaign, door-knocking in Cheboygan, MI. If you'd told me in 2003 that twenty years hence, Donald Trump would be literally the best they got, I'd have punched you in the face, Time Traveler.

And I'd have been screaming "He's a fucking Democrat" when the cops hauled me off to jail.

I mean...when Trump...the presumptive front-runner without even so much as getting off his fat ass don't even bother to show up and he still dominates the goddamn show, I mean, what??

Except it gets worse, way worse.

Whatever members of the Republican Base that CNN found to poll about this shit-show decided that Vivek Ramaswamy, AKA Ramascammy, Wanna-scammy...you know...the Plant-based Trump. The Hindu motherfucker who thinks 9/11 was an inside job, thinks he gonna bring the Caste system to America, says he'll fire the Federal Government and wants to sell Ukraine to Putin so that he can pay for bombing Mexico...won the goddamn debate.

The Plant-Based Trump...it's good for ya (George Carlin Voice.)

Except the motherfucker really isn't even that. He's a wannabe Rap Guy who couldn't swing it, so No Money G had to go into "Business" instead...and went from there to politics, which in real terms means he's running his campaign off David Sacks' and Peter Theil's money.

Now...what an actual devout Hindu would likely say about No Talent V here taking money from a racist South African Commie-wannabe whose fondest wish is to suck Vladimir Putin's shriveled old balls and a German heretical Christian gay dude who literally drinks the blood of teenagers...I'd hesitate to tell you. But I think I can reasonably well extrapolate that it wouldn't be that much different from what a devout, practicing Christian would say about such people...if there were any of those left on the "Right."

And there aren't, it's as simple as that.

I'm here to tell you, if somebody like Vivek Rama-Rama-Ding-Ding would've run for President in, say, 2004...and dared to invoke "God" on a stage somewhere...the Evangelical world would've collectively been like "What god is that, cupcake?" 

If the motherfucker wasn't just straight laughed out of politics (or far more likely, chased with pitchforks and torches) he'd have been facing Evangelicals lined up 'round the block wherever he went, looking to correct the various errors of his belief system and share the "Good News" of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. ~John 14:6

It was a different Party, hell, it was a different world. The "Compassionate Conservatism" of George W. Bush was losing out at the street-level to Evangelicals who were expecting the Republican Party to impose some kind of an Evangelical theocracy on America. 

Not that atheistic Neoconservatives like Dick Cheney, the Koch Brothers, or their assorted potentates like George W. Bush and John McCain had any intention of ever doing so, or ever thought they'd get away with it if they tried.

(And, deep down, the Evangelical base knew it, too.)

Until, that is, these fucking people foisted Sarah Palin on the rest of us...as a result of this same exact under-the-radar struggle that you almost had to be an ex-Christian with specific knowledge and life experience of Dominionism and Pentecostal Whackadoodle-ness to even be aware of at the time. 

I tried to warn people, I did.

I cannot stress it enough, knowledge of this shit is commonplace now, in 2005, not so much.

And almost everything I know...shit I put vast amounts of my life and time into studying so I'd know how to fight it...is completely obsolete...replaced by Sedevacantist medieval Catholicism, Trump-cultism and an utterly vapid, areligious Prosperity Gospel so full of entirely secular Whack-a-nut conspiracy theories that the collective lot is so fucked in the head, they've about kicked Jesus Christ right the fuck out of his own religion.

So I mean, technically if you think about it the political rise of a Hindu grifter like Rama-scummy who's about half a step up from buying a call center in Mumbai and running gift-card scams is probably not actually the worst thing that could come out of this shit-fest.

And the legit worst thing is, none of this shit will matter. In about two hours Rama-smarmy will be reduced to just another punk-ass wearing a "Free Donald Trump" T-shirt and shouting he'll burn down the American legal system to free Trump if elected.

Republicans have, truly, lost themselves.

Reagan Wept.

And then these same motherfuckers are content to outsource how conservatives should be acting in these times (let alone the things they should be fighting for) to...well, other people.

Then they'll continually disrespect those other people, threaten not to help them, and demand the whole rest of the world sell out to Vladimir Fucking Putin, late of the KGB.

I remember when Republicans thought somebody like Putin could conjure devils. Oh yes, I do.

It's a whole goddamn party of Manchurian candidates now.

And if we want to get rid of these motherfuckers, long-term, it's going to come down to a fight.

So be a better citizen, and be prepared to get your War Dance on.

But if these motherfuckers keep being...well...these motherfuckers, it'll be a short war.

Слава Україна!

Ka mate, ka mate! ka ora! ka ora!
Ka mate! ka mate! ka ora! ka ora!
Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru
Nāna nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā
Ā, upane! ka upane!
Ā, upane, ka upane, whiti te ra!

~Ka Mate, Maori Haka (main body)

...
'Tis Death, 'Tis Death, 'Tis Life, 'Tis Life
'Tis Death, 'Tis Death, 'Tis Life, 'Tis Life
This is the hairy man
Who caused the sun to shine again for me
Up the ladder, up the ladder!
Rise! The Sun shines.
~Ka Mate, English translation.

(Ka Mate is a resurrection story, a triumph of life over death, as I've mentioned before. Remember that.)

Five

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press