Spiraling Out (Coming After You, Two-Mike Pence edition.)

 If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

...

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

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

I saw this last night, it was posted at some point yesterday.

Trump, on "Truth Social" (which is two lies for the price of one) ranting about Mike Pence.

And evidently, yesterday, Trump Supporters threatened and yelled at Mike Pence.

Mike Pence, of all people. The clanking mechanical heart of the Party Of No. That Guy.

Pence should be a goddamn Republican rock star at this point, if not the Party's fucking frontrunner. Dude basically is the (Pre-Trump) Republican Party, personified.

But instead, here we are.

Of course, Yesterday, I either was doing other things or I was sleeping because I had to work last night.

So I didn't see all this.

But let me tell you what I did see.

A confluence of several events led me to post about a late friend of mine on Facebook, one of the grill cooks I worked with for the first several years that I worked at the casino. Hell, I specifically said in the post that I didn't expect very many people to understand. This dude, his nickname was "Beetlejuice" because he looked and acted a lot like Michael Keaton's character in the eponymous movie. He'd make these big ass sandwiches and shit that looked about like the ones Scooby Doo and Shaggy made in the original Scooby Doo cartoon. I made a couple big ass roast beef sandwiches yesterday that turned out about like something that dude would have made.

All the initial commenters were old-school people I worked with back in the day who understood what I was talking about, though.

Several posts in, some idiot MAGA that I worked with for a couple years proceeds to barge in like "What about me?" He then proceeds to bitch about being laid off (and not called back) during the COVID-19 shutdown (which he called the "Scam-demic") and then say he'd never work at the casino again anyway. Gee, I wonder why they didn't call his ass back.

How shitty does one's life have to be to just randomly inject oneself and one's negativity into somebody else's obviously personal shit? 

What's even the damn point??

And what the fuck do these clowns get out of denying major world events that are obviously happening and that can be seen, like, with our eyes??

I get that some people like being angry, or are mentally ill, or are miserable bastards who just want everybody else to be miserable like them, or that some people simply can't handle the reality of a changing world...but whether it's COVID-19 or the War in Ukraine or the fact that Russia has been turned into a Re-Sovietized shithole all but re-adopting the Hammer and Sickle as its national flag, maybe it's just me, but I don't see the point of trying to deny an observable reality we're all living through.

You don't have to like it, but it is what it is. Wishing it all away because it's inconvenient to your narrative won't work.

It's like these Q-Anon people who seem to think nobody ever really dies, oh sure, in Q-Anon Land which is somehow magically ruled by their perfected God-King version of Donald Trump and everything else is some kind of elaborate plot...you get "executed" but then you're a clone or a robot or some shit...until some mythical future point where everybody is magically made to understand why all this was necessary and then everybody gets to live forever in some kind of hyper-tech paradise? You'd think if all this magical hyper-technology stuff actually existed, it would've made Cable News by now.

Instead in the real world, one of the people behind that bullshit "Sound Of Freedom" movie just got popped for child pornography or some shit.

Or these fucking people that think Antifa was ever an actual thing, or that Communism somehow still is but somehow only here in America? (And how does that work when the vast majority of actual voting Democrats are capitalists who simply want a better-regulated system?)

Not to mention this damn near mythological (in real life) idea that "Conservatives" are all tough...when half the bikers I know (and nearly all the explicitly right-wing ones, at that) are in their real lives shit like cubicle mice, school bus drivers (That's what the one "Biker For Trump" I've ever met is) or warehouse workers who have average dad bods and and tell vastly improbable martial arts stories...and who almost universally look and act like haven't taken or thrown a punch since middle school. Also the other half of bikers I've met...to a great extent they don't vote (or can't anymore) and are dominated by convicted felons who've lost their 2nd Amendment Rights. Like, what part of "Biker Gang" and "Outlaw Biker" don't these people get? 

The one like, legit Biker I actually know around here who's an actual member of a veteran's bike club with legit requirements for membership...is an old hippie dude who adopted one of my old ferrets (An asshole of an Albino male weasel literally named Sir-Bites-A-Lot with the attitude of a bent shitcan who then embarked on a career of being this guy's emotional support animal for the rest of his weasel life) and, being retired, this dude mostly just smokes weed. He sure doesn't want to fight anybody, he says he had enough of that in the Army in Vietnam.

And somehow "Antifa" which means "Anti-Fascism" is in these fucking people's minds both Communist and Fascist and all-powerful despite the fact that it's basically just a few dozen dudes in the Portland metro (if that) mostly known for brawling almost exclusively with local far-rightists.

But they've made up the idea that it's some kind of national or supra-national thing because they desperately need/want a boogeyman? Wut?

Who the fuck seriously wants to be afraid or angry all the time?? I've struggled with depression, I couldn't do it...not if I wanted to stay alive. And I had actual reasons to be that way, I didn't go looking for them.

But if these chucklefucks can't find some shit to argue about, they'll just make shit up so they can count coup over imaginary enemies...like we don't have enough real ones??

Yet again, Communism hasn't been a thing since 1989. This despite the fact that Putin, who they idolize, is officially trying to bring that shit back in Russia...just without the social welfare aspects...which basically equals out to fascism in proper terms.

And the MAGA's look at all this contradictory crap...at the fact that Russia is an obvious soup sandwich and can't even defeat Ukraine...or at Trump's America of constant chaos, government-by-Tweet and pandemics...and think they see Perfection?? 

Who the hell looks at an old, overfed, obviously-demented shit-bag like Donald Trump and thinks they see some kind of Great Warrior? And that, again, mostly because he said racist shit a few times? 

Make this shit make sense! I can't do it!

I'm sick of Magic Words and Phrases. I'm tired of unending attention-seeking and performative idiocy that cannot even be bothered to simply leave other people alone and mind its own business. Because the government is going after Trump for his crimes, these fucking people are basically coming after you because, fuck, I don't know...their parents didn't pay attention to them or something something Gazpacho.

America is supposed to be a nation of laws, not men, with the Constitution as its guiding star, rather than the whims of some narcissistic wannabe-despot. 

America is based on citizenship, not some chain of power and submission. If we don't reign this Trump bullshit in now, it's only going to get worse. Not later, now, it's getting worse now.

Somebody has to stop this downward fucking spiral.

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen, and this ain't it.

One

Слава Україна!

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.