This Present Darkness (9/11, 22 Years Later, Two.)

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us; they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them. 

~Hunter S. Thompson.

...

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

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

So, without any evidence or reason, or even a House vote, (Which, you know, is a requirement for pretty much anything in the House, because it's a legislative body) Republicans are launching an Impeachment Inquiry against President Biden.

Note: In what should be a familiar pattern to anybody who's...ever been physically capable of paying attention...the so-called "Freedom Caucus" still ain't happy. 

I'm legit afraid to ask what would make these fucking people happy at this point.

They are, in fact, threatening to remove House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for...I don't know, failure to rule by decree in their favor, or some shit...as if he could just clap his hands and say "So let it be written, so let it be done!" As if such were even possible 'cause ya know, in spite of these fucking people's best efforts, this is America.

And I'm really, really tired of the All-Electric Choad Orchestra that the modern Republican Party has turned into and you may note I say this as a former Republican myself.

There's literally no point to any of this crap, except that these fucking people want to #1 Try to "Balance the books" and create a false equivalence between Biden and Trump (Note: This is also the whole point of the unending creepy Hunter Biden obsession. They're still mad their 2020 "October Surprise" came to nothing.) #2 They're trying to make a mockery of legislative government and representative Democracy itself. #3 It's even worse than that, really. 

Why?? Because these fucking people are obsessed with reactionary "Thinkers" like Niccolo Machiavelli, who justify their overall shitty view of the world, Republicans are basically trying to say "Everybody's bad, vote for us" as if that somehow absolves them of anything. I guess they figure if everybody's Evil then no one is Evil?

I'm sorry, I used to be a Christian. I simply was not taught that way.

I mean, shit, things are so bad that Mitt Romney is announcing that he's retiring instead of running for a second term. This guy was once the leader of the Republican Party and at least on Twitter, his retirement has been met with a barrage of Tweets calling him "Just another RINO" and saying "Good Riddance" and these are mostly from Trump Supporters.

Love him or hate him, Mr. 47% Car Elevator Vulture Capitalist is pretty much the last remnant of the traditional Republican Party and again, being a former traditional Republican, I'm not finding myself shedding any tears for the passing of what was once my political movement.

A hell of a lot of these fucking people sold their souls to Donald Trump for pennies on the dollar and then they were surprised when the deal with the Devil wasn't even in the fine print, but simply boorishly announced by Tweet and the vast majority of these motherfuckers fell in line like good little Stalinists and that was that. The Republican Party set every previous value it ever claimed to have on fire and left it in the middle of the road to burn...all for *Checks Notes* Donald Trump.

Like, Mitt or anybody else was somehow surprised when lying sacks of shit like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who treat their Senate seats like auditions for Fox News gigs and Far-Right bullshit podcasts, bet their own careers on fealty to Trump rather than to America or the Constitution??

These fucking people don't care about anything.

If America goes the way of the Soviet Union and people on government or military pensions or Social Security...like Soviet pensioners in the 1990's...are forced to try to exist on the equivalent of $7 a month...guys like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz will still be rich. Yes, that's actually the calculation these shitheads are making, here.

If America splits two (or more) ways, they know in anyplace that doesn't actively try to counteract loss of revenue and collective economic power (Which means, among other things, raising taxes, percentage-wise, by quite a lot, without much in the way of loopholes) current standards of living will simply evaporate. (And guess who and where that's going to hit much harder, Red States! That's right! Play stupid games, win stupid prizes!) 

Worse, these motherfuckers are openly counting on religion as the Opiate of the Masses, some level of cruelty theater, and quite likely war against their neighbors to distract the Masses from the fact that they have nothing to eat. (And trust me, Blue areas and States will band together more quickly and with less trouble.)

Assuming they survive the fall from their high perches, these guys might, like many a Soviet apparatchik, end up in a position of some small influence somewhere...but if they don't they'll be dead and since these guys all (really) believe they'll just be worm food at that point and that their alleged religion is all crap and they'll never actually have to face their own vengeful God?? 

LOL, Nothing Matters, not even the cause.

And it gets worse, oh yes, it does. Remember, these idiots have endless contempt for each other and everybody else and they...living in America...think they're Barons and Dukes and Earls and shit.

Well, they do, at least until they get thrown out of a theater for vaping around a pregnant woman despite repeated (polite) requests to stop. 

"Do you know who I am??" ... "Yes, and I don't give a shit" is probably not the answer they ever expect to hear...but if things keep going as they are they're going to hear that quite a bit.

Motherfuckers, our current civilization is the only thing what gives you any power in the first place.

You'd think, ya know, conservatives would understand that.

Republicans...probably accurately sensing that they can just make shit up and threaten to murder people and still not lose a large core percentage of their base...are doing exactly that.

These idiots aren't trying to govern a nation, they're trying to immanentize a particularly shitty right-wing eschaton. They wan to live in a world that consists of basically the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia...but with like, a church and a mall or some shit.

The whooping and hollering mob that Republicans ginned up, at this point, is perfectly willing to burn down their own shit for no reason other than debased boredom and sheer stupidity.

Republicans appear to want to live in a world of ashes and wreckage, petty kingdoms and small banana republics. They desperately want to go back to the paradigm of Lords and Peasants and Serfs with not much in between (in a country where that was never part of the deal) and they're hoping the same trifecta of bullshit, hate and religion that has bamboozled them and their voters into utter turpitude is going to work on everybody. 

And if it doesn't, they think their obsession with Force and Power will get the job done. Never mind that they don't have a monopoly on that, either, and have never been as good at employing it as they imagine themselves to be.

Note that America is also getting less religious, in no small part to the endless and stupid machinations of the Christians themselves.

They don't seem to even have the imagination to understand that other people could really believe other things, or that somebody else might not want to go back to that crap.

And along the way, they've managed to dredge up things far worse than themselves...and not only that but some of these Republican dipshits (Laura Loomer for example) are actively fucking around with literal Nazis.

Most Republicans seem not to care.

I don't know how the hell these idiots think that's going to work out well for them. Laura Loomer is Jewish, yet somehow never fails to support Christian Nationalism and Nazis.

(Why would anybody support people whose express goal is to kill them??)

I'll never get it, or maybe I just don't want to.

But it's not my job to be the Idiot Whisperer, nor to try to reason with deliberately stupid, mentally ill or willfully unreasonable people.

I'm a citizen, not a peasant or a serf and I intend to stay that way. I've served my country, and I was taught to respect its Constitution and its values. If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen.

If you're fine with being some Republican's bitch or a Russian slave, get the fuck out of my face, we've got nothing to talk about.

The actual evidence suggests strongly that the horserace narrative the media is trying to construct is a bunch of crap and that, if anything, Trump is less popular than he was when he lost in 2020.

Seems like a low bar to beat these fuckers, but you still have to get off your ass.

So get up, and get after it. It's that simple. If you cannot push back and hold a candle against this present darkness, what the fuck are we even doing here??

It rather seriously bothers me that Republicans are the ones trying to finish the work that Osama Bin Laden started.

You either believe in freedom or you don't. 

Слава Україна!

One

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. 

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran