On Imagination And The Fall Of The Blackbird (War Dance, Two.)

Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy — everything. ~George Orwell, 1984.

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There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.  ~George Orwell, 1984.

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

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

So, Elon has decided he wants to get rid of the Block button on Twitter.

Fuck that. On that note, I'm out.

Anybody that follows me, anybody that knows me, knows I block relentlessly, I curate the shit out of my feeds because Twitter has long been a shithole, and it's gotten worse since Elon Musk has been in charge of it. For me, things haven't actually changed that much because I relentlessly police my feed, I block and report Trolls and TOS violators, etc. etc. 

If I can't do that, what's the point??

There hasn't been any point in reporting anything for awhile, because there's no one there. 

So, if we can't police our own shit, what's left? 

Go down swinging against a tide of idiot far-right Trolls like some group of Apocalypse-survivors who can't outrun a horde of a million zombies??

Bro I've watched or read enough Zombie fiction to know how that shit ends. No matter how badass of a stand you make, you still get eaten or turned.

You already can't scroll three posts down in the damned comments on anything without seeing an ad.

Twitter has already been becoming more and more unusable for weeks, there's always some stupid thing going wrong, some unnecessary extra thing popping up, somebody you want to follow who can't post much because they're constantly rate-limited. The list goes on...

And people you don't wanna see popping up in your shit no matter what you do.

And through it all, no matter what happens, there's still that coterie of Elon Stans, the "Slams Dick In Car Door/Masterful Gambit, Sir" people. You know, people with more money than sense and no lives, who seem to make it their mission in life to constantly give Elon and/or his ego blowjobs 24/7/365.

And then there's people like this ass-clown, "Catturd" who seem to think they can get whatever they think they want by infinitely doubling down on a particularly shitty right-wing attitude and just trying to overrun anybody else what even shows up.

Even...in fact, especially, other Republicans.

Motherfucker, Communism hasn't even been a thing since 1989.

I'm frankly very fucking tired of people who couldn't keep a job at fucking Walmart (and who allegedly got fired for saying racial slurs on the job, motherfucker I worked for Walmart in Northern Michigan in 2000, probably a third of my customers were Jamaicans, Black people, do the fucking math how that stacks up in retail) getting MAGA-Internet-Famous and trying to go around either making fun of everybody else or trying to tell them how to live their lives. In effect, these motherfuckers became fascists not out of ideological zealotry pushed beyond some political Roche Limit...but simply because they thought it was funny.

And one of those people perpetually on the target list of the MAGA Zombie-horde is Mike Pence.

You know, all-time Mr. Evangelical Republican so old-fashioned he observes the "Billy Graham rule" and calls his wife "Mother." The Clanking Mechanical Heart of the Party Of No.

And he's not good enough for these shitheads?

"Don't Care, Still Voting For Trump" but the pinch-faced asshole who would've instantly been President if Trump would've choked on a Filet O' Fish and died in office is Persona Non Grata?

Had all that happened, there's a non-zero chance Pence would be President now because he wasn't a hair-on-fire asshole during the worst parts of COVID-19. But you can't tell that to these fucking people.

These people don't want America, they don't want a Political Party in any kind of "Republic" (and they bang on that like it's somehow distinct from democracy) they want Jonestown.

And that's Musk's idea of Twitter, being a Reply Guy to this useless sack of shit. Literally Billion$ of dollars, could have been The Guy to propel Humanity forward into reaching for the Stars...literally could have been the President or Potentate or whatever of Mars...a real-life Vilos Cohaagen...and he's spending all his time on Twitter, monomaniacally seeking the approval of some CHUD in Florida who names himself after cat shit??

I can't make this bullshit make sense.

It was just easier to get myself Blue Sky and Threads accounts.

Meanwhile, all the people who made Twitter what it was have been branching out onto other platforms, doing what they do, creating and sustaining communities. Moving on. 

While Musk flesh-crafts Twitter into some demented Frankenstein image of Himself like a demented, Cackling Tzimisce mad scientist in Vampire: The Masquerade, the world is moving on. Sure, the communities formed on Bluebird Twitter got atomized, but they're reforming...in some cases, with lightning speed.

Just as I watched Facebook power much of the Arab Spring, watched my college friends shout "THIS IS YOUR COUNTRY, ACT LIKE IT!" into the ether of Facebook, and watched Christians defending Muslims at prayer and vice versa in Tahrir Square in Cairo in the videos my friend uploaded, and saw men shouting "Allah Akbar" as they climbed on top of tanks...and one by one, the tankers joined the protesters in their prayers. Man by Man, the Army turned against Hosni Mubarak.

I watched it, and I bring that example up for a purpose.

As Bruce Feiler put it in his book Generation Freedom, about the Arab Spring, what is the sound of a million people praying?

The true tragedy of Donald Trump, or Elon Musk, or whoever the fuck "Catturd" is, is that such men cannot be bothered to even consider that such questions should be asked. 

Because that might lead somebody, even them, to belief in something greater than themselves.

Just as I spent four years watching Twitter function as a networking tool for people resisting Trump, and we all watched in horror the excesses of Antivaxxers during the height of COVID-19, and watched Derek Chauvin choke out George Floyd...and we all watched the George Floyd protests, the 2020 elections, January 6th or the early stages of the war in Ukraine...watching with hope as Javelin missile teams and anybody who could shoot a Stinger put enough points on the board for the brothers with nothing but an AK-74 to hold the line...and so on. 

Mourn that which has passed into eternity, yes, but then get off your ass and get back into the fight.

The day will come when we watch history be made, and the struggle for freedom in dark places unfold via Blue-Sky or Threads or whatever that we ain't even heard of yet.

Musk bought Twitter because he believed some far-right malarkey about the "Blue Checks" being some secret society or some shit.

He didn't understand, there was no Secret Society, there was only us.

People, communities, were the damned product.

All the blue check meant was you were who you said you were.

And when we leave, when we go somewhere else because we don't want to deal with stupidity, all his far-right turd-burglars will get bored when the euphoria of thinking they've won a great victory wears off, and then they'll leave because none of these idiots like or want to talk to each other, either.

And when they follow, looking for the fight, they're going to find we haven't been idle while they were busy jacking each other off, and that we regained our own strength, or found new ways to use it.

Conservatism, as it currently exists, is not just a moral sinkhole. It's an utter failure of imagination.

These motherfuckers couldn't do what it took to fight a virus, how they gonna stand up to even a well-performed War Dance done by real warriors?

Remember that.

Freedom isn't free, but it's a whole hell of a lot easier to reach for if you don't have both hands occupied trying to build a golden idol of your Self.

If you want a better country, be a better citizen.

See you around.

One

Слава Україна!

Freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our founders declared a new order of the ages, when soldiers died in wave upon wave, for a union based on liberty, when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner 'Freedom Now', they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. ~George W. Bush

...

Yesterday you came to lift me up

As light as straw and brittle as a bird
Today I weigh less than a shadow on the wall
Just one more whisper of a voice unheard

Tomorrow leave the windows open
As fear grows please hold me in your arms
Won't you help me if you can to shake this anger?
I need your gentle hands to keep me calm

'Cause I never thought I'd lose
I only thought I'd win
I never dreamed I'd feel this fire beneath my skin
I can't believe you love me
I never thought you'd come
I guess I misjudged love between a father and his son. ~Elton John, The Last Song