Mug Shot Trumpy G, and other lies (War Dance, Seven.)

[A group of new prisoners is being processed into Shawshank State Prison.]

Norton: This is Mr. Hadley, he's captain of the guards. I'm Mr. Norton, the Warden. You are convicted felons. That's why they've sent you to me. Rule Number One: no blasphemy. I'll not have the Lord's name taken in vain in my prison. The other rules, you'll figure as you go along. Any questions?

Inmate: When do we eat?

[Norton nods to Captain Hadley, who gets right in the new inmate's face]

Byron Hadley: You eat when we say you eat! You shit when we say you shit, and you piss when we say you piss! You got that, you maggot-dick motherfucker?! [slams his baton into the new inmate's stomach, causing the man to fall to his knees, gasping for breath] On your feet.

Norton: I believe in two things: Discipline and the Bible. Here, you'll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord. Your ass belongs to me. [smiles] Welcome to Shawshank.

...

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.

So, yesterday evening Trump was arrested, indicted and posted bail (using a bail bondsman) in Georgia.

So far, the results of this crap have been...amusingly predictable.

Yet also supremely unfunny at the same time.

By which I mean, Republicans are trying to act like they're all Biggie and Tupac now. I mean, seriously?

No!

*Glares in 1990's Rap Guy and I was a Republican.*

Like, are you fucking kidding me?

Rap grew out of, for the most part, the shit conservatives and Republicans did to urban Black folks. 

I've had this conversation with, ya know, actual urban Black people who in some cases had to join the military to even get out...and then had it explained to me years later in far more educated and technical terms by social workers that were Black, Native American and White. You stupid motherfuckers and your first-world problems with Third World coup aspirations and your unwillingness to see the fucking around all the way through to the finding out phase don't get to claim that mantle.

More to the point I keep seeing the Republican idea of "Art" and seriously, I'm like fuck that.

Note I say this as a fan of old-school, Outlaw Country.

Being musician enough to be considered an iconic symbol of anything usually requires giving a shit about other people...think Johnny Cash, or Tracy Chapman...even, perversely, Kanye West has been enduring despite going full MAGA.

I've had that conversation with a black dude also.

So don't try and tell me, Republicans, that you need Trump to be some sort of "Ultimate Gangsta."

No, bro. Just...No.

You got actual people that have actually done shit already. This is just the Republican political class trying (and failing) to make itself "Cool" and seem victim-y while also trying to bogart its failing hegemony and Power and push that high on forever. My dudes, the entire point here is that one of these things is absolutely not like the other one.

Nobody gets to be both cultural rebel and ruler. Nobody gets to be both High Priest and iconoclast.

Nobody has that kind of power. No one can, something must lose.

You cannot be both a god and the Devil.

It simply does not work like that, by definition, it cannot. These are entirely different spiritual archetypes.

The Lord's Word says one cannot serve both God and Mammon.

There was a reason for that. 

Jesus knew.

You have to pick a fucking side.

And you have to be aware there's tradeoffs.

Like, cultural rebels or those seen as such might get shot for no reason by the cops, because classism, racism, resentment...or just plain old shitty politics.

I mean, really, you ask me? 

A lot of this bullshit is just aging Boomers in Red Hats becoming painfully aware that they ended up being bad caricatures of all the shit they accused their parents of being.

And I'm here to tell you, Republicans are more than willing to take that shit and run with it.

And make it a hell of a lot worse.

Like apparently Marjorie Taylor Greene showed up in Georgia to support Trump and she got chased off by Laura Loomer and a bunch of mentally-ill fanatics.

And Sarah Palin, of all fucking people, is openly calling for Civil War.

Bro if that's your leadership...if even current Republicans like Kevin McCarthy and MTG cannot go far enough...if we all gotta get our War Dance on...it'll be a short war. 

More to the point, the only way your civil war is gonna cause anything other than a whole bunch of dead people (and it'll be worse for your side, trust me) is if you get your ass kicked bad enough to claim real international sympathy and get the United Nations to back you...but I find that massively unlikely.

Anti-American Tankie Twitter ain't gonna save you.

FLN in Algeria could pull it off specifically because they were an anticolonial movement in the anticolonial 1950's. 

You idiots want to colonize your fellow Americans. 

Again, one of these things is not like the other one.

And I've reasons to doubt both the competence and good faith of your backers.

You cannot have both the Cross of Christ and the Hammer and Sickle. The methods of one side or the other, usually the worse of the two by way of being more expedient to Power, will win out...and that's what happened in Russia. The Red Banner won.

Something's always going to lose.

And it's a safe bet, that something is you.

Trump can either be the leader of a conservative political party, or he can be Mug Shot Trumpy G. He cannot be both...unless neither he nor the movement he leads is anything it says it is, and that creates its own special set of problems. 

Again, something has to lose here.

Probably, you.

Trump and a lot of rich Republicans can afford (or borrow or grift or steal) enough to buy off reality, if only for a time. Most of the rest of us cannot.

(Evidence also suggests that time is running out.)

America, hell, civilization...is based on citizenship. The answer to how do we get a better nation is "Be a better citizen." All that defiant "Up yours" crap generally got old for most of us by the time we graduated from high school. Sticking a giant foam-rubber middle finger up at the rest of the world ain't fixing shit.

And I'm tired of it, fuck off with that garbage.

Six

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.)

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

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press